GE Aviation Systems has announced an ‘Open Flight Deck’ project, aimed at breaking down barriers to the introduction of new aviation technologies.
The company is the lead participant in the project, which has received funding of 13.1 million pounds ($A21.9 million) over three years by Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency. The other project partners are BAE SYSTEMS, Rolls Royce, Coventry University and the University of Southampton.
GE Aviation sees the open flight deck as a logical extension of the avionics common core system, or CCS, pioneered on the Boeing 787 and also used on the Gulfstream G500/600. This allows modules to be plugged in to the avionics platform as required, providing both flexibility and future-proofing.
In a statement, the company said, ‘Aircraft are in service for decades, yet there is a huge barrier to adopting new technologies on the flight deck due to the high cost of change and certification. An Open Flight Deck architecture will define the standards and interfaces to allow functional apps to be developed, which are then easier and quicker to deploy’.
President of Avionics for GE Aviation, Alan Caslavka, said, ‘Open Flight Deck will deliver order-of-magnitude reductions in the cost of change, future-proofing platforms by enabling regular upgrades of flight deck applications. This technology will deliver significant benefits to future aircraft manufacturers, airlines and pilots’.
It looks like it might have come out of the Starship Enterprise,or a Battlestar Galactica.I doubt that it would be able to fit in our Cessna,
Sometimes technology works against us humans, we are at times too clever for our own good. We have seen a lot of techno related accidents over the years, I wonder have we lost sight of the very reason the Wright Bro’s invented their flying machine?