Honeywell successfully flew its new integrated Anthem flight deck for the first time using the company’s Pilatus PC-12 testbed, the company announced May 12. While the integrated flight deck has accumulated more than 120 hours’ of flight time during testing over the last year, this was the first time that a flight was entirely managed by the Anthem system, according to the company.
The milestone flight took place over Phoenix and lasted for about one hour. Honeywell test pilot Ed Manning flew the PC-12 testbed with copilot Bill Lee, with support from flight engineers Paul Carter and Will Quinn.
“This is a historic milestone as Honeywell Anthem is poised to change the way aircraft are piloted,” said Jim Currier, president of Honeywell Aerospace’s Electronic Solutions division. “Throughout the flight, the pilot and crew tested various aspects of the modular and customizable system, and it performed exactly as designed.”
“Honeywell Anthem is simple, smart, and intuitive, and it takes little to no time to feel comfortable with it,” he added. “Moving forward, flight tests on the PC-12 aircraft will focus on exercising the system in real-life operational scenarios that will provide critical feedback for robust final red-label designs.”
The Anthem flight deck is a cloud-connected cockpit system with touchscreen displays that have built-in processors, eliminating the need for bulky external computers and processing modules. According to Honeywell, this architectural system reduces the size, weight, and power requirements of an aircraft’s avionics system by about 50 percent.
Honeywell said it designed the avionics suite to be customizable for just about any type of aircraft, including airliners, business jets, small general aviation aircraft, advanced air mobility vehicles, and military aircraft.
“Honeywell Anthem is breaking new ground in avionics design and the pilot-machine interface, with the goal of making pilots’ jobs easier and safer and essentially allowing pilots to configure their own cockpit based on mission and phase of flight,” said Ken Hurt, v-p of engineering for Honeywell Anthem. “This flight is a clear demonstration of the maturity of the Honeywell Anthem system and positions us strongly on a path toward achieving [FAA] certification.”