Taking advantage of the aircraft’s presence in Europe, Honeywell hosted reporters on a rare public flight aboard its Boeing 757-225 test aircraft on Saturday here at Le Bourget Airport, before the Paris Air Show. The avionics manufacturer demonstrated technologies such as its “SmartRunway” and “SmartLanding” (SR/SL) situational awareness aids during the hour-long flight from Le Bourget.
Honeywell (Chalet 106) uses the aircraft, the fifth 757 that Boeing produced, primarily as an engine testbed for its HTF7000 and TFE731 business aviation engines. The starboard side of the jet’s forward fuselage sports a distinctive pylon on which an engine undergoing testing attaches.
Inside, the cabin is configured with several seats in the forward section and several test stations aft. Like Honeywell’s five other aircraft in its flight-test fleet, the 757 is based at Deer Valley Airport north of Phoenix.
The aircraft also serves as a “flying technology lab” for the variety of flight deck avionics, weather radar and cabin connectivity systems Honeywell produces. The manufacturer recently used it to correlate readings of the RDR-4000 IntuVue weather radar system in ice crystal detection trials sponsored by the 16-nation High Altitude Ice Crystals Consortium in Cayenne, French Guiana.
Before arriving in Paris on June 13, the 757 conducted testing in Birmingham, UK, of the satcom hardware Honeywell is supplying for Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band service, which promises data speeds of up to 50 Mb/s. “It was in the neighborhood, so we stopped by,” said Carl Esposito, Honeywell vice president of marketing and product management.
With Honeywell lead test pilot Scott Nyberg in the left seat, the 757 departed Le Bourget for Châlons Vatry, an airport 100 miles to the east. Before takeoff, the SR/SL system, a software upgrade of Honeywell’s enhanced ground proximity warning system, called out the approaching Runway 25 and issued an “excessive runway time” alert when Nyberg deliberately held back at the threshold.
In high and low passes over Châlons Vatry Airport, Nyberg and copilot Brian Williams prompted the system to issue aural alerts warning that the aircraft was too high, too low or in danger of landing long, all to prevent against the danger of runway excursions.