​Rockshox’s New Flight Attendant Will Control Your MTB Suspension For You

Flight Attendant promises to revolutionize how your suspension works on the trail. | SRAM photo.

Rockshox has always been on the forefront of mountain bike innovation, and they just took a quantum leap into the future with the release of their all-new Flight Attendant system. Flight Attendant is an automatic electronic suspension adjust system that listens to and responds to your riding in real-time. With sensors on your fork, shock and cranks, it claims to adjust your suspension settings in real time to offer the perfect amount of support, plushness and vibration damping. Flight Attendant is available on the 2022 Pike, Lyrik, and Zeb forks as well as the 2022 Super Deluxe shock.

The idea behind automatic suspension isn’t exactly new: Fox released Live Valve (developed from their motorsports racing division) a few years ago, but it never really took off. Rockshox’s Flight Attendant looks to be a much more refined version of the system. Independent AXS battery-powered units mount to your fork and shock, with a pedaling sensor that integrates into your cranks (available on the 2022 XO1 and XX1 cranksets). The system analyzes bump impacts, bike position, and pedal strokes and adjusts the suspension between open, pedal, and lock modes. Auto mode is further user-customizable to allow for fine-tuning of setup if you so desire. The system is adjustable via the existing SRAM AXS app.

The flight attendant system mounted on the newest Zeb and Super Deluxe Ultimate suspension bits. | SRAM photo.

Beyond the electronic components of the new system, Rockshox further updated the damper system inside the new Pike, Lyrik, and Zeb Ultimate forks. Rubber vibration-reducing pucks (Rockshox calls them “ButterCups”) are now integrated into the bottom of the damper and air shaft assembly to further reduce trail vibrations. In addition to the Buttercups, a new Debonair+ air spring is designed to give better mid-stroke feel and ride higher in the fork’s travel. Finally, the Pike, Lyrik, and Zeb Ultimate forks now feature pressure relief valves on the lowers to allow air pressure to equalize with variations in altitude or temperature.

So is all this really necessary on your bike? It's definitely pretty cool to see this much thought being put into optimizing suspension performance to make a specific type of bike work across a broader spectrum of trails. We see this being very promising for the latest crop of long-travel enduro and trail bikes as a way to make them more comfortable to pedal during races, or on big-mountain adventures that require lots of uphill grinding to access the goods. If you're into tricking out your bike with the latest and greatest tech...well here it is!

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stash member Max Ritter

I manage digital content here at TGR, run our gear testing program, and am stoked to be living the dream in the Tetons.