50 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awst
John Croft Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Forward thinking is apparent in
Rockwell Collins’s retrofit cockpit
T
ouchscreens are slowly becoming standard fare in the
modern cockpit design philosophy, but not when it comes
to the primary and multifunction displays. Some design-
ers say it is because crews sit too far from the devices, making
touch impractical; others say touch as a technology is just too
gimmicky to put on such crucial real estate, particularly for
larger, more complex Part 25 aircraft. Still others say that since
their customers must wear gloves, touch won’t work.
Rockwell Collins did not heed such skepticism, and now
has what may be a game-
changing new flight deck
to show for it, complete
with touchscreen dis-
plays across the front of
the panel, touch toolbars,
icon-based controls and
simplified automation
interfaces for single-
pilot operations. Set for
first certification late this
year as a retrofit option
for the Beechcraft King
Air—a family of Part 23
twin turboprops—the
inaugural Pro Line Fu-
sion retrofit is intended
to be upwardly mobile.
“From a certification
standpoint, the technol-
ogy is directly applicable
to aircraft certified un-
der Part 25,” says Adam Evanschwartz, director of business
and regional aircraft marketing for Rockwell Collins. Pro Line
Fusion is the company’s newest integrated flight deck, flying
today on the Bombardier Global 5000 and 6000 as well as the
Gulfstream G280 and Embraer Legacy 500. More than a dozen
other civil and military aircraft will be equipped with Fusion,
including the Bombardier CSeries, Mitsubishi MRJ and Avic
MA-700 regional airliners.
Touch control on the three 14-in. landscape displays at the
front of the King Air is an important element of the flight deck,
but not the prize attraction given the pressure required by the
safe and conservative resistive touch technology being used,
a selection that also works with gloves. Pilots, me included,
invariably try to pinch and zoom the screens, a learned behav-
ior from the ubiquitous capacitive touchscreens we all use on
consumer devices, but one that yields no results here.
From the pilot’s perspective however, the power of the
King Air upgrade is more in the blending of touch with the
flight-deck’s advanced synthetic vision and the overhaul of the
human-machine interface for single-pilot operations, a design
that is intuitive and very engaging.
I sampled the new cockpit with Rockwell Collins senior
flight test captain, George Palmer, in the company’s King Air
250 demonstrator on a flight from the company’s home base
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Rockford, Illinois, on Oct. 16. The
flight included light instrument weather conditions during
one approach, but with very little turbulence, a factor that
is often of concern for touchscreen considerations. I am not
a King Air pilot and rarely fly aircraft equipped with a flight
management system (FMS), but I was able to easily program
the simplified version of the Fusion FMS and quickly became
comfortable with operating the flight deck during two 30-min.
flights, including taxi, takeof, climbs and descents as well as
instrument approaches.
Launched in 2011, the King Air retrofit originally targeted
aircraft that were factory equipped with Rockwell Collins
legacy Pro Line 21 avionics, although the company in Sep-
tember announced that it would also ofer the upgrade for
the older Pro Line 2-based flight decks, bringing to more than
2,000 the potential pool of targeted King Airs. Certification
of the Pro Line 2 upgrade is slated for mid-2015.
Evanschwartz says
costs for the retrofit
will be “in the neigh-
borhood of $250,000”
when existing equip-
ment, including radios
and autopilots, can
remain in the aircraft.
The expected down
time is less than two
weeks. First to be de-
livered will be Pro Line
21 King Airs sold by
Hawker Beechcraft,
now Textron, to cus-
tomers in 2011 when the
program was launched.
Textron service centerswill modify Pro Line 21 aircraft; Landmark Aviation will up-
grade Pro Line 2 aircraft. The launch customer for a Pro Line
2-equipped King Air is an undisclosed party. Evanschwartz
says the Fusion retrofit will eventually “migrate to other
platforms.”
The design goals—keeping the pilot’s eyes forward and
head up—were evident when Palmer, sitting in the right seat,
brought up power to the flight deck of N117EU at the Cedar
Rapids airport to prepare the aircraft for the flight.
Noticeably missing is the traditional control display unitTouchdown
NEXT-GENERATION AVIONICSAviation Week Senior Editor John Croft tried out
Rockwell Collins’s Fusion touchscreen flight deck
recently on a Beechcraft King Air 250.JOHN CROFT/AW&ST圀漀爀氀搀䴀愀最猀⸀渀攀琀圀漀爀氀搀䴀愀最猀⸀渀攀琀
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