Hot on the heels of Governor Deval Patrick trying to destroy the aviation industry in Massachusetts, Avidyne, our only local avionics company, which was founded by an MIT alum, has suffered the loss of their largest customer, Cirrus Design. Route 128 is high tech, but apparently Olathe, Kansas is higher tech. Garmin has sewed up nearly every new certified aircraft design with its G1000 system. A Garmin glass panel is now standard on more or less every plane from the Chinese-built $130,000 Cessna 162 Skycatcher right up through the $4 million light jets. The one big thing that Garmin was missing was synthetic terrain, a featured offered by Microsoft Flight Simulator for $39, in experimental airplanes for $2,000, by Chelton as part of a $90,000 retrofit system and as of a few weeks ago by Garmin as a $10,000 option.
More: Aero-news.net.
The new implementation looks like a dream come true for those of us that prefer the G1000 and the GFC 700. If only they had it on the SR-20 G3, then I’d be very interested especially considering the two years of free maintenance offer going on right now.
I would love to know what drove the decisions at the various aircraft companies. I suspect it was the single source / high integration. The GFC 700 integration alone has to be worth quite a bit of cost savings because you don’t need another box in the cockpit and the training and systems integration has to be much lower as well.
I wonder if the integration actually improves safety by reducing complexity and pilot workload?
Christopher: The new system should be safer because it includes synthetic terrain and a much better autopilot (attitude-based instead of rate-based). Avidyne has tortured Cirrus customers with months of downtime for each airplane that needed software upgrades, which is to say nearly all Cirruses ever built. Garmin products can be upgraded in the field.
Michael: I’m sure that they will have it for the SR20 soon enough.
It will be nice. I’m based at KAPA so having the SR20 get the G3 wing was a major step in the right direction. Adding G1000 to the mix will be nirvana. The wife dislikes the center stick in the DA-40.