Honeywell chose the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in July, to welcome visitors to see its Pilatus PC-12 equipped with the new Anthem avionics suite. This was the first time Honeywell showed the system to the public in an airplane where the original avionics were almost completely replaced by the Anthem system.
Just before the show began, Honeywell invited me to go on a flight in the PC-12 to try out the Anthem avionics. This was the first time I’d flown in an aircraft with Anthem; my previous Anthem experience had been in Honeywell’s engineering simulator. And while I normally like to fly the airplane myself, in this case, it made more sense to spend the time in the air with the avionics and not worry about managing the airplane.
Honeywell chief pilot Ed Manning flew left seat and briefed me on the Anthem setup. Lead flight engineer Paul Carter was part of the required crew and manned a mission station in the back of the PC-12.
While all the avionics in the Honeywell PC-12 are the new Anthem variety, the original Apex autopilot servos and engine instrument system remain in place. One limitation on this PC-12, which is flying under an experimental airworthiness certificate, is that it can fly only in VFR conditions. That’s how Manning and Carter flew from Honeywell’s Olathe, Kansas avionics development facility to Appleton, Wisconsin, where the demo flights took place before they moved the airplane to Oshkosh. At AirVenture, visitors could view the Anthem avionics and the test equipment in the PC-12 and try out Anthem in a simulator.
Widespread Interest
Since unveiling Anthem in October 2021, the Honeywell team has written more than six million lines of code and has logged more than 10,000 hours of bench running time as well as hundreds of hours in the PC-12. Honeywell isn’t publicizing a date for when Anthem will enter service, but it is targeting a variety of market segments, from advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft to Part 23 and 25 airplanes, both in the retrofit and forward-fit (new aircraft) arenas. Three companies have thus far announced plans for Anthem avionics in their aircraft, Boom Supersonic for its supersonic airliner (which will also be available as a business jet) and AAM developers Lilium and Vertical Aerospace.
“We’re in discussions with every OEM,” said Honeywell vice president Andrew Barker, adding that these include makers of all sizes of aircraft. Anthem was conceived as an integrated avionics suite that can fit into small aircraft with one or two displays up to airliners and even military aircraft with multiple displays. It is compatible with simplified vehicle operations concepts and Honeywell’s compact fly-by-wire flight control system that are aimed at the AAM market.
More important for Honeywell’s future is that Anthem is a platform that could introduce new pilots flying training aircraft to Anthem’s operating philosophy, and these pilots would find a familiar interface as they graduate to different types or larger aircraft equipped with Anthem. This is similar to Garmin’s strategy with its integrated avionics, which began with the G1000 suite in Cessna 172 trainers and now extends to many turboprop and business jet models.
“Anthem is not designed to be an entry-level Class 1 [suite],” Barker explained. “But it is designed to be G1000-class and fully integrated. Yes, we’re getting costs out, and you won’t see the same systems in a 172 as an airliner. But [it will be] a familiar user interface from small to large aircraft. If you’re familiar with Anthem, you’re going to be able to operate it [in any aircraft].”
Anthem in the PC-12
In the flight test PC-12, the Anthem setup includes three touch-display units (TDUs), which is a similar configuration as the now-traditional dual primary flight display (PFD) and single multifunction display (MFD) in this size airplane. Two pilot interface display units (PIDUs) are mounted in front of the center console, underneath the center TDU. Each TDU can host a page that looks exactly like the PIDU, called a pilot interface window (PIW), so all the functions that control Anthem are available on any display. On top of the center TDU is a typical Honeywell flight guidance panel. Airframers that select Anthem can opt for a cursor-control device as an alternative to all-touch interfaces.
Some planned Anthem features weren’t yet available in the PC-12 build but will be coming. These include the secure cockpit browser, which will enable certain software apps to run in a secure window, such as the web version of ForeFlight. The connected mission manager, which provides a timeline view of an entire flight, was not included in this version. Other planned features that weren’t yet available include flight management system (FMS) performance initialization, chart display, 3D taxi, traffic, airport information, and checklists.
The PIW is the primary interface that pilots will use to manage Anthem, and its touchscreen has all the buttons for operating radios, planning a flight, and pulling up systems synoptics. At the bottom of the PIW is probably the most unique feature of Anthem, the multiple data field or smart scratchpad, which Honeywell calls the predictive user interface.
Scratchpads are a common design feature on FMSs, allowing users to input, say, a frequency and then select which radio will be assigned that frequency. The Honeywell User Experience (HUE) design team took the scratchpad further into the future and made it much more useful. Touching the scratchpad enables the user to input various types of data, and the scratchpad automatically recognizes the data type and prepares it for proper placement.
For example, when starting to type in a frequency, the smart scratchpad recognizes what it is and automatically suggests the full input for the user to accept or change. It knows the difference between a frequency and a transponder code or an altitude and where to put these numbers. The scratchpad can accept up to 10 inputs at a time, and each one can be placed where needed, in a frequency field such as Com 1 or 2 or in the transponder field, etc.
Of course, the scratchpad isn’t the only place pilots can input data. On a PIW radio page, just touch a field and type in the frequency.
As Manning explained, “Whatever ATC tells you, just put it in the [scratchpad]. It helps you get tasks done faster.”
Pilot Interface
Some smaller aircraft might not have room for a hardware guidance panel, but that doesn’t matter because the PIW has all the autopilot and flight director controls on the touchscreen. The buttons each light up so they double as status indicators, and flight mode annunciators are displayed in the top center of the TDUs in front of the pilot seats. Honeywell plans to add the autopilot control buttons on the PIDUs but for our demo, they were available only on the TDUs. Likewise, there is no physical audio panel as a pilot interface, but all of its controls are available in the PIW.
Other PIW functions that can be replicated with a physical knob on the guidance panel include heading, altitude, baro setting, vertical speed, and manual airspeed. But for those who prefer touch controls, all of that can be done on the PIWs.
One interesting choice that I couldn’t help noticing was the alphanumeric keyboard and the lack of a QWERTY keyboard that pops up for inputting information. While anyone should be able to get used to an alphanumeric keyboard, it doesn’t seem like it would be difficult to offer both types as an option when airframers spec out their Anthem systems.
Anthem’s flight display and moving map, including the synthetic vision, don’t look much different than the latest version of Honeywell’s Epic and Apex platforms. This makes sense as Honeywell has put a lot of effort into human factors design and clearly should leverage this capability. Plans call for adding to Anthem’s synthetic vision system runway overrun awareness and alerting system functionality as well as 3D waypoints and depiction of the flight path across gridlines. On the moving map, more graphical flight planning capabilities are coming as well, including the ability to build and display a traffic pattern as part of a visual approach.
Because a key Anthem feature is cloud connectivity (connection to the internet while airborne for suitably equipped aircraft), cybersecurity has been taken into account from the initial design work. Anthem will also be able to detect GNSS spoofing and mitigate spoofing encounters. Popup reminders are another useful feature, letting pilots know things like a projected shortfall of fuel at the destination.
Behind the scenes, Anthem runs on distributed modular hardware that takes up less space than Honeywell’s current avionics systems. The touchscreens are all of the capacitive type, which delivers the best response to pilot input, Manning explained.
Ultimately, Anthem isn’t revolutionary but it is a highly evolved version of what Honeywell sees as the future of avionics and how pilots interact with the aircraft they fly. Taking on the challenge of designing avionics that can meet the needs of all sizes of aircraft is a considerable hurdle but also an expected move on Honeywell’s part.