Deutsche Aircraft has chosen the Garmin G5000 avionics suite as the basis for its Companion flight deck for the new D328eco twin turboprop regional airliner, the German company said Monday.
The Companion flight deck features touchscreen control for avionics and aircraft systems, flight path-based guidance, enhanced synthetic vision, active electronic checklists, increased system automation and integration, single lever engine control, and paperless operations capability. Deutsche Aircraft calls the implementation of the Garmin avionics into the Companion flight deck “a key enabling system” toward future single-pilot operation capability.
U.S.-based Garmin says it paid special attention to human factors, increased situational awareness, and features like envelope protection, automatic emergency descent mode, and runway awareness and alerting. A flexible and configurable maintenance computer, highly integrated built-in testing, and diagnostic functions with quick and easy upload and download of data will result in what the company calls unprecedented maintainability.
The D328eco remains in its preliminary design review stage, where engineers concentrate their efforts on the maturity of new systems and materials required to support the aircraft design targets and industrialization. The design calls for a two-meter stretch to the original Dornier 328 fuselage to accommodate up to 43 passengers and new Pratt & Whitney PW127S engines that would run on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Deutsche Aircraft continues work on the program from Oberpfaffenhofen Airport near Munich and has begun planning work to establish the final assembly line at Leipzig Halle Airport. The company has secured land for the plant, which plans to ready for the production phase in 2025 after the new model receives an EASA type certificate. It plans to conduct flight testing at Oberpfaffenhofen.