Flightdeck systems marketing manager David Wu talks to BRENDAN GALLAGHER about the past, present and future of Rockwell Collins’ integrated flightdeck for business aircraft
Drowning in data, starved of information. That used to be the predicament of business jet pilots before the introduction of integrated avionics and display systems like ProLine 21, with its sharp colour screens and vivid maps and weather graphics.
“Quite simply, ProLine 21 and its integrated flight information system [IFIS] capability give pilots a better overall picture of their situation in the area in which they are operating,” says David Wu, flightdeck systems marketing manager for Rockwell Collins Business and Regional Systems. “When you land at an unfamiliar airport, for example, you can see on the electronic chart exactly where you are with respect to runways and taxiways - no more fumbling through reams of paper.”
At the other end of the scale, IFIS provides a strategic view of the weather hundreds of kilometres down-route, allowing crews to make re-routeing decisions long before conditions start to turn marginal. “If you’re going from, say, our facility at Cedar Rapids to somewhere sunny like San Diego, there might be thunderstorms along the way,” says Wu. “With IFIS graphical weather you can actually see them coming from a long way off without having to work to decipher textual weather reports.”
ProLine 21 entered service at the beginning of the decade and is now firmly established in the corporate aviation market, mainly in North America, but now increasingly in Europe too. “Most business jets are still delivered to North American customers,” Wu points out. “The second market is Europe, followed by the rest of the world. We go basically where the business jets are delivered.”
First applications of the system were the Cessna Citation CJ1 and CJ2. Since then it has made its way into types all the way up and down the range, from the Beechcraft King Air to the Bombardier Challenger 605. “We’re very strong in the entry-level, light, medium, super-mid-size and heavy sectors, and we expect our presence only to increase in the future,” says Wu.
Occupying the market alongside ProLine 21 is Honeywell’s Primus Epic, as well as comparatively new offerings like Thales’ TopDeck, the Garmin 1000 and the Universal Avionics range. “The new entrants have made it more than a two-horse race,” says Wu. “But we’re pretty confident we can hold an approximately equal market share against our main competitor.”
Rockwell Collins is pinning its hopes for ProLine 21’s continued success on a philosophy of continuous improvement that has its origins in the original ProLine 2, developed for the Boeing 757 and 767 airliners in the 1970s. That was followed by ProLine 4, first applied in the canard Beech Starship and featuring the first steps to integrate the various boxes into avionics cabinets.
“ProLine 4 is still in production today for types like the Challenger 604 and the CRJ200/700/900 regional jets,” says Wu. “It’s fully digital in nature, with an Arinc 429 databus and full electronic flight instrumentation and engine indication capability. But the screens are CRTs, whereas ProLine 21 has LCDs, and that’s the first big difference between the two systems.”
ProLine 21 development started in the 1990s and the system now accounts for most of Business and Regional Systems’ integrated flightdeck production. “The move to LCDs was driven by the need for displays capable of making the most of all the rich chart and weather detail promised by IFIS,” Wu explains. “The stroke-based nature of the cathode ray tube limits its ability to display information – with LCDs you can show much more complex information and refresh it more quickly.”
The original ProLine 21 platforms, the Citation CJ1 and CJ2, featured 8 x 10in (200 x 250mm) LCD screens. On the Challenger 300, certificated in 2004, screen size was upped to 10 x 12in. The other major innovation in ProLine 21 is IFIS itself, along with its supporting file-server unit. “That represented a major step forward when it hit the market around three years ago,” says Wu.
ProLine 21 was conceived primarily as line-fit equipment for new aircraft, but it also forms the basis of a market that Wu sees as small but significant. “Line fits account for by far the higher percentage volume – hundreds a year compared with occasional ones and twos of retrofits,” he says. “But the retrofits matter to us because we offer ProLine 21 as an upgrade path for airframes that still have a lot of life left in them. It helps owners to operate efficiently in modern airspace and adds to the value of the aircraft.”
Wu maintains that operators who retrofit ProLine 21 more than recover their investment, pointing to blue-book values by way of evidence. Rockwell Collins is keen to encourage this and has recently introduced a package designed to make the retrofit decision even easier.
“In a full retrofit it’s necessary to rip out the existing autopilot and sensors,” Wu explains. “You’re basically putting in a whole new system with the possible exception of the integrated engine indication and crew alerting system [EICAS], and even then you would update the displays. However you look at it, that’s a big job.”
The ProLine 21 IDS (integrated display system) package is designed to interface with the existing autopilot and sensors, so that aircraft downtime and installation cost are significantly lower. “You can even spread the upgrade over a number of shop visits,” says Wu. “One display or one side of the cockpit can be completed at a time, as the owner’s operations and budget permit.”
IDS may be the latest addition to the ProLine 21 mix, but it is unlikely to be the last. A “ProLine Lite” aimed at very light jets should not be ruled out – “we’re watching developments in that market closely and see it as a potential opportunity,” says Wu – and both terrestrial and satellite datalink can be expected to play an ever bigger role in supplying information to integrated flightdecks.
“Rockwell Collins is introducing the eXchange satellite broadband service for use by passengers, and we see it serving the flightdeck and ground engineering staff too,” Wu predicts. “With its ability to deliver megabits per second to the aircraft it can be used to update on-board databases, and the link could also send volumes of diagnostics data to the ground to help the engineers prepare for post-landing rectification work. I expect eXchange to interact more and more with ProLine 21 in the future.”
Source: Flight Daily News
