Honeywell Offers Phased Analog-to-Digital Cabin Management System Upgrade

Honeywell Aerospace is now offering a phased upgrade program for customers with its analog C-Series (CS) cabin management system to migrate to a digital cabin system. Dubbed Ovation Select CS, the upgrade path applies to the more than 1,600 operators with C-Series-equipped aircraft and integrates new digital Ovation Select components in a “planned, scheduled and phased implementation.”

The flexible solution can be done incrementally in three phases and includes a variety of available cabin upgrades at an affordable cost, said William Rowell, Honeywell senior manager for business and general aviation cabin systems technical sales. It also allows those with C-Series systems to mitigate obsolescence issues associated with the failure–prone MHT galley touchscreen user interface.

The first phase of the upgrade replaces the MHT with an 8.9-inch Ovation Select Touchscreen (OST) and updates two C-Series analog control boxes with Ovation Select’s digital backbone–the digital utility interface (DUI) and cabin interface unit (CIU). The DUI facilitates user control functions while the cabin interface unit forms “the heart of the system,” said Rowell, since it is an Ethernet switch that acts as the audio/video distribution and command and control box, interconnecting all of the cabin equipment across the digital network.

Fly-away cost of the Phase 1 implementation ranges from $150,000 to $250,000, depending on engineering and labor, Honeywell said. The upgrade also adds the capability for users to control audio/video and lighting with Apple iOS and Android devices running Ovation Select cabin control apps.

Phase 2 of the upgrade is more extensive, replacing analog cabin video and audio systems with HD 1080p monitors, Blu-Ray disc players and Surround Sound systems, in addition to Ethernet-based cabling and digital audio/video ports. It also updates the moving map display to JetMap HD, including a database with 15-meter satellite imagery that provides much more terrain detail than the C-Series’s older JetMap I/II with 50-meter images. Because this phase is customized to both the airplane and customer, Honeywell is unable to provide a price range.

The third step completes the transformation to the full Ovation Select system, adding the PCU100 and/or PCU200 at-seat touchscreen passenger control units. Pricing is also unavailable for this phase since this is dependent on the airplane and seating configuration.

According to Honeywell, the conversion from C-Series to Ovation Select also reduces weight and wiring. A Bombardier Global Express that upgraded to the newer digital cabin system shed 100 pounds of weight, Rowell told AIN.

The full Ovation Select system gives business jet passengers the ability to control in-flight entertainment, connectivity and cabin environmental conditions such as lighting, seats, temperature, galley and window shades via the at-seat touch-screen interface or from a mobile electronic device. In fact, Honeywell is now in the final stages of developing an Apple Watch app, expected to be released next month, which can control cabin systems.

Meanwhile, Ovation Select is “4K/Ultra HD ready,” though Rowell said that the electronics industry has yet to coalesce around a media content standard for this next-generation video format, which provides four times the resolution of 1080p. “Right now they’re going through what amounts to the VHS-Betamax fight again,” he noted. “Because of this, we don’t expect 4K to be ready for the aerospace market until sometime in 2017, even though 4K monitors currently exist.”

To date, more than 100 Ovation Select systems are now in service, and this number is expected to rapidly increase over the coming years since the cabin manager is standard equipment aboard the new Embraer Legacy 450 and 500 midsize jets. The all-digital cabin system can also be retrofitted to any business aircraft, Honeywell said.