The Falcon 900EX EASy, flagship of the Dassault business jet family and making its Singapore debut at Asian Aerospace, is "an extraordinary merger of brains and brawn", as the sign on the side of the aircraft on static display claims.
A year after its first flight and three months after certification, the state-of-the-art EASy flightdeck heralds what Dassault calls a "new era and monumental leap forward in avionics design".
Dramatically
The EASy cockpit, designed to dramatically improve situational awareness for pilots and reduce cockpit workload, is set to become the platform flight deck for all future Falcons.
EASy has been developed by Dassault in partnership with Honeywell from whose Primus Epic hardware platform the system is operated.
The "cockpit of the future", as Dassault is calling it, aims to improve aircraft safety by making systems more intuitive, interactive and adaptable to pilot' needs.
Explaining the significance of the system, Jean-Francois Georges, then senior vice-president of civil aircraft, Dassault Aviation and the man who spearheaded the development, said: "Manufacturers have a responsibility to improve safety. Ironically one of our industry's problems is that we have all been making essentially very safe aircraft for a very long time.
"Now the safety curve is levelling off. The only solution is to improve situational awareness.
"We see this at Dassasult as our culture comes from 50 years of manufacturing single-seat fighters such as the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale.
"The values of situational awareness are obvious – in terms of tactics, safety and in terms of keeping the pilots' mental processes at their optimum level."
Chief pilot Dave DeAngelis has spent around 85h flying with the EASy configuration and is positively evangelical about its benefits. "We've made a huge step forward. Other manufacturers may have components that we're using in EASy but none have the same combination."
Source: Flight Daily News
