Honeywell Anthem Flight Deck Achieves First Flight

Using its Pilatus PC-12 testbed, Honeywell successfully conducted the maiden flight of its newly integrated Anthem flight deck, the firm reported on May 12. According to the business, this was the first flight that was totally controlled by the Anthem system, despite the integrated flight deck having flown for more than 120 hours during testing over the previous year.

The historic flight, which lasted roughly an hour, passed above Phoenix. Together with copilot Bill Lee, Honeywell test pilot Ed Manning piloted the PC-12 testbed with the assistance of flight engineers Will Quinn and Paul Carter.

“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 cloud-connected Anthem flight deck has touchscreen screens with built-in processors, doing away with the need for large external computers and processing modules. According to Honeywell, this architectural concept cuts the avionics system’s size, weight, and power requirements by around 50%.

Airliners, business jets, small general aviation aircraft, advanced air mobility vehicles, and military aircraft, according to Honeywell, can all be equipped with the avionics suite.

“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.”