American Airlines has selected Evans & Sutherland (E&S) to supply visual systems for five full-flight simulators recently ordered from CAE Electronics. The deal follows the announcement at the end of September that E&S had won a United Airlines contract for six systems.
The two large orders boost E&S' commercial-visual sales for the year to date to 28 systems, which the company estimates represents a market share of over 80%. The balance of commercial-visual sales went to CAE.
E&S has sold almost 50 systems since entering the market in 1994 as an independent. The company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, had long been tied to Rediffusion on sales of civil visual systems, but that ended with the simulator manufacturer's acquisition by Thomson Training & Simulation (TTS).
Despite consolidation in the simulation industry, airlines have continued to show a preference for buying simulators and visuals separately, says Stuart Anderson, general manager of E&S' UK-based Commercial Simulation division. "We entered the market with a very neutral stance," he says.
Although E&S competes with CAE and TTS for visual sales, it has agreements with both simulator manufacturers to use their wide-angle display optics.
E&S has also teamed with the UK's SEOS Displays to offer an independent optics option, which has been chosen by United, Air China and Korean Airlines. "We have redefined the visual system, with the display becoming part of the simulator," Anderson argues.
The company sees its share of a visual as being the image-generator (IG) and projectors. Sales have "almost exclusively" been of the company'sESIG-3350 IG, although some have involved its low-cost Liberty, or even used previous-generation SP-Xs. "We could sell more SP-Xs, if we could get them," Anderson admits.
The success of the E&S military-visuals business has benefited civil products, says Anderson, helping to underwrite high development investment and sales volumes. "We are the low-cost, high-volume supplier-We probably have the lowest underlying costs of any competitor," he says.
To reduce operating costs, E&S has developed a new projector, the ECP-2000, which uses commercially available cathode-ray tubes. New database-modelling tools have been produced, which run on low-cost Windows NT workstations, and which can halve the time taken to build an ESIG-3350 database compared with one for the earlier SP-X. "We are intent on driving that down further," Anderson says.
Source: Flight International
