tween fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, at 49% and 51%, respec-
tively, and “both are growing pretty dramatically,” says Pratt.
The growth that interests the company the most is in the
special missions area, where needs are increasing but bud-
gets are shrinking. “Coast guards, border patrols, drug in-
terdiction agencies, domestic air sovereignty forces, training
organizations—all are being asked to do more with less,” he
says. “Instead of buying a new Sikorsky S-92, they’re instead
refurbishing 10 S-61s for the same amount of money.”
For autopilots, demand in the Part 25 transport-category
aircraft market is rising based on obsolescence with sys-
tems using vacuum tubes and through-hole circuit boards,
says Pratt. A new autopilot Genesys is developing for an un-
named customer will apply to 50,000-lb. takeof-weight air-
craft, which include Bombardier Dash 8 series, the ATR 42
and ATR 72, as well as commuter turboprops and small jets.
“That’s the sweet part of the market where people are coming
to us saying, ‘We really wish you had an autopilot for our ap-
plication,’” says Pratt. “Some are special mission customers
but a lot are short-haul commuter and freight operators.” He
says the demand is global, but particularly active in Europe,
Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Aiding the EFIS expansion is a software feature that Price
developed years ago, but one that the company has now
branded. The Oasis, (Open Architecture System Integration
Symbology) is a software tool that allows Genesys engineers
or the customer, when trained, to modify or create elements
on the display. “It’s almost like a very high-level object-oriented
program language,” says Pratt. Display changes are made via a
text file that compiles into a special software load that is “pre-
certified” to the highest software reliability level (DO-178B Lev-
el A) and gets approval at the aircraft level as part of an STC.
Pratt provides an example: “Halfway into a flight-test program
after a year and half of work, the test pilot or launch customer
wants a torque gauge that is 10% larger and an ITT [turbine
temperature] gauge that is 10% smaller so he can quickly pick
out one versus the other. In a traditional system, that would
take a couple days of software mods, a six-month verification-
and-validation efort and $100,000 of Level A testing. We can
do it in an afternoon; it can be flying the next day and not afect
the certification schedule.”
How much the customer can do is limited mostly by imagi-
nation or need—buttons and labels generated by a mission
computer, a search-and-rescue radar display, weapons/store
management, simulated air-to-air tactical intercept for a
trainer that does not have tactical radar or live simulated
adversaries. “A solid-state circuit-breaker system used to re-
quire tremendous amounts of software the first time around,”
says Pratt. “Now it can be done in a few weeks by an aircraft
manufacturer. We teach them how, and they generate their
own Oasis files.”
One area where Genesys is about to make big changes to
its legacy EFIS in the 3-D imagery in its synthetic vision,
which historically had a blue sky over brown terrain with
contours shown by a wire mesh overlaid by flightpath and
aircraft performance symbology. The system uses 6 arcsec
foreground terrain for the 3-D scene on the PFD; 24 arc-
sec for background terrain, and 3 arcsec for the 2-D moving
map display. While most other synthetic vision providers
moved to full-color systems with 3-D realistic terrain years
ago, Genesys did not. “There were some certifications re-
quirements in the FAA that we wanted to make sure we met
so we could maintain our synthetic cert in all four classes
[Part 23, 25, 27, 29],” says Pratt. “Now that the requirements
have become more harmonized, you’re going to see dramatic
improvements in our displays in terms of the color, the re-
alism and the shading, including bodies of water.” He says
the software update, which will be field loadable, will be out
before year-end. What will not be added are taxiways and
airport structures on the 3-D or 2-D diagrams, elements that
Pratt says customers have not requested. “We’re not ruling
it out,” he says, “but in the past it has not been a driver for
winning programs for us. We’re not Garmin, with hundreds
of software engineers at our disposal. We pick and choose
what we’ll develop and certify.”
Systems are built in Mineral Wells, where about half of the
employees are involved with touch labor, says Smith. Com-
ponents, rather than completed systems, are stocked. From
order to shipment, an autopilot takes 3-6 weeks, depending
on priority; an EFIS takes about 12 weeks.
Pratt says while Genesys EFIS prices are generally high,
cost is relative. “If you are the commanding general of an air
force in Latin America and you have six Black Hawks with old
Sperry gyros in an analog cockpit and three are down at any
time because you can’t get parts, you come to us,” he says.
Genesys, he says, can deliver hardware in 12 weeks, while the
competitors, Honeywell, Rockwell Collins or Thales, would
take two years, ultimately resulting in a higher cost.
“The price for one of our displays would shock you, un-
less you’re that commander of the armed forces and you’re
equipping the Black Hawks, in which case you say, ‘What’s
the catch?’ ” cAviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 45
Genesys Aerosystems’ flight deck
for the Grob G120TP military trainer
displays the company’s new en-
hanced synthetic vision during a
flight over the Bavarian Alps.BRIAN HANDLEY
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