Near real-time diagnosis of engine data could avoid need for pilot involvement in maintenance reporting
Honeywell is adapting its GSM-based Telematics monitoring system, best known as the heart of automobile tracking hardware, to aircraft self-diagnostics. The manufacturer hopes the system could eventually replace all pilot involvement in maintenance reporting, which can delay and even impede an aircraft’s upkeep.
Telematics and diagnostics portfolio leader Gary Bird says tests involving Honeywell’s Dassault Falcon 50 and Hawker 800 business aircraft, and possibly several from other corporate fleets, will begin in the last quarter of this year or early in 2006 to determine the uses of near real-time data for monitoring engine performance. Between 10 and 20 aircraft will be used.
A successful trial could result in an initial launch later in 2006 of a plug-in engine diagnostics system. Honeywell plans eventually to develop a full diagnostics system for business and commercial fixed-wing airframes as well as rotorcraft. The launch unit will be about “half the size of a small lunch box”, and will plug into the standard RS422 serial port normally used to download data to a laptop.
Honeywell has not decided how far it wants to retrofit the technology, but the launch unit will probably be compatible with the Arinc 429 databus and ACARS datalink.
“The initial tests are less about the technology – that’s already out there,” says Bird. “It is more about innovation and how to demonstrate the integrity of Telematics.”
The tests will replace the manual downloading of information with software that automatically sends engine data to a Honeywell ground station within 24 hours of landing. Currently, this information is downloaded to a floppy disk or laptop hard drive either in four- or five-week rotations or when a warning system alerts the pilot of a problem.
“This flow of data will allow us to find problems early as well as trend such things as top speed and temperature,” says Bird. “But the real innovation here is the process of acting on this information.”
DARREN SHANNON/WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
