“The amount of time which the pilot devotes, from an interruption perspective, is quite high,” Gupta maintains. The pilot is making some flight plan changes via the instrument panel or a tablet in response to weather variations when air traffic control interrupts that task to warn of traffic with instructions to contact another Traffic Center on a different frequency. Gupta relates an example wherein a bizjet flight from Phoenix to London has just reached cruise altitude. The resulting smartphone-like UI can speed pilot tasks and minimize interruption in-flight, Gupta says. Though he admits he loves “buttons and knobs,” Gupta explains that Honeywell told Anthem developers they could use only the company’s flat panel displays when designing the control interfaces for the system. It will make pilot’s lives easier and everyone associated with that flight, maintenance technicians, operations directors,” Gupta affirms.Īnthem’s touch-and-swipe interface plays its part in easing information access. “When we say we have an ‘always on’ cloud connected avionics or flight deck suite, it ultimately has a purpose of reducing pilot workload.
It provides unprecedented ease of access to information, including third-party applications, to the flight crew at any point in a mission. In so doing, Anthem doesn’t just bring internet into the forward display stack Gupta says.
In the air it connects through high-speed Ka/Ku band satellite links. The INSU connects the Anthem flight deck to internet via WiFi or 4G LTE cellular connections on the ground.
HONEYWELL S&C 906106 PATCH
Even when an aircraft so-equipped sits on a patch of tarmac, powered down, cold and dark, Honeywell’s Integrated Network Server Unit (INSU) is running on battery power, keeping the cloud connection active. Those old enough to remember when a Bendix/King avionics panel was the gold standard (Bendix/King is now a Honeywell brand) will understand the primacy to which the company would like to return.Īnthem’s always-connected quality and user friendliness theoretically pave a way for that return.
The near to mid-term future is key for Honeywell, eager to regain market share from Garmin International, which has come to dominate the general aviation - and increasingly business aviation - avionics markets in the past couple decades. “What we’re trying to drive differently with Anthem is being always connected, not just when you’re on the ramp … It’s always connected and architected in a way to provide that capability in the future.” “There are lots of systems which can connect to the cloud,” he says. Vipul Gupta, vice president and general manager of avionics for Honeywell, is keen to stress that Anthem is the first comprehensive cloud-connected cockpit system on the market. this pair striding from a Bombardier Challenger 350. Honeywell says its Anthem cloud connected flight deck system will make life easier for pilots like.