With the issuance of a supplemental type certificate for the retrofit of the Garmin G5000 in the Cessna Citation 560XL earlier this month, Elliott Aviation has begun its first installation of the upgraded flight deck on a Citation Excel along with its own Prizm cabin lighting system and Smart Vision Shades.
The G5000 STC applies to nearly 700 aircraft, and the Illinois-based MRO—which in 2015 performed the first retrofit of the avionics package in a Hawker 400XP—said it already has 16 more 560XLs booked in the queue for the installation. “We expect the Garmin G5000 program for the Citation Excel and XLS to be a huge success,” said Conrad Theisen, Elliott’s director of avionics sales. “We have seen a lot of interest from early adopters with 17 aircraft sold.”
The retrofit for the Excel and XLS carries an average base installation price of $500,000 and replaces the Honeywell Primus 1000 avionics, including the flight director system and autopilot, and offers ADS-B Out, WAAS/LPV, dual-channel digital flight control system, integrated engine indication and crew alerting system (EICAS), all in a lighter-weight package, while swapping the obsolescent CRT screens for LCDs. Current options include synthetic vision, turbulence detection, SurfaceWatch, underspeed protection, and Chartview. Additional optional functions such as CPDLC/Link 2000 services, FANS-1/A, and lightning and hail prediction will be added in the future.