KIERAN DALY
Thales Avionics and Smiths Group are planning in-service trials of their flight management system (FMS) for Airbus aircraft to start in September.
The programme, aimed at ending Honeywell's monopoly in the sector, earlier suffered severe delays but European certification is now imminent and the system should be flying in 10 aircraft of customer Alitalia from September.
A month later, the partners intend to begin a similar trial with the same number of aircraft in the fleet of a US customer yet to be agreed.
Dale Masbruch, Smiths' director of Airbus programmes, says Airbus delivered the certification data for the system to the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) four days ago. "The system will be ready for general introduction at the start of 2003," he says.
That day cannot come too soon for the team which launched what was one of Europe's most important avionics programmes in 1998 but a year and a half later was forced to reveal an 18-month delay while it addressed serious software integration problems. Remarkably, all the customers that had committed to take the new system have stayed loyal, even though many have meanwhile had to fit FMSs from Honeywell and now face switching out those boxes, as what is called the Revision 1 box for the Airbus narrowbody family becomes available.
Masbruch says: "Right now we are at a very nice juncture in the programme. Airbus has submitted that data to the JAA and we are awaiting certification, which should be soon."
Swap
The box will be fitted to the Alitalia aircraft and the in-service evaluation that will follow is designed to check for any unexpected functionality problems that have not been discovered on the ground. Thales will provide additional training as requested and will allocate staff to fly in the aircraft jumpseats if Alitalia and the US carrier so wish.
Masbruch says that it has not yet been decided which customers will be next to take deliveries but notes that airlines typically like to have any retrofit programme completed rapidly in order to avoid having two systems in the fleet at one time. He explains that the work is a simple swap of the boxes which can be performed overnight.
The schedule for finishing the work to see the Revision 2 system for the widebody family into service is still being drawn up with Airbus but Masbruch says it is running roughly 18 months behind Revision 1. By far the majority of the orders so far are for narrowbodies.
Alitalia is one of Thales/Smiths most recent customers, added to a list that includes at least: Air France, America West, Asiana, British Airways (BA), China Northwest, China Southwest, DaimlerChrysler Aviation, International Lease Finance (ILFC), Qatar Airways, US Airways, China Eastern, Korean Air, Frontier Airlines, Cyprus Airways, and another US customer that has never been identified.
Both BA and US Airways have confirmed to ATI that they do intend to take the Thales/Smiths system despite the delay. In the interim Thales/Smiths, unexpectedly lost the sole-source contest to supply the FMS for the Airbus A380, but Smiths officials flatly decline to discuss the reasons and, in particular, whether their performance on the earlier Airbus work was responsible.
Source: Flight Daily News
