eFlight by Collins Connects to Internet And Maybe Later the Passengers Too

Revamped Hawker 800XP will have eFlight capability through Pro Line 21.

A new e-business initiative called "eFlight", designed to augment the capabilities of its state-of-the-art Pro Line 21 and Pro Line 21 Continuum avionics suites, is the centerpiece of the latest marketing push at the newly independent Rockwell Collins.

"eFlight brings connectivity to the aircraft and the flight deck," Phil Barnes, director of advanced technologies, told Show News. "And we are using the Pro Line 21's information management capabilities to do it."

There will eventually be a cabin element to eFlight, specifically a high-speed data capability for Internet use, but that is a little way down the road. Instead, eFlight has been designed initially as a tool for the flight deck, and will provide the flight crew with position reporting, graphical weather from companies like Universal Weather, systems status, and messaging between flight operations and the flight deck.

Even though Pro Line 21 was designed in the years before the Internet revolution took the world by storm, Barnes said that Rockwell Collins built eFlight capabilities into the hardware so it could be "turned on" once digital technologies progressed sufficiently to be really useful.

"We put in an Ethernet connection and communications back- bone to handle the information flow," said Barnes. "It included a layered system architecture for future applications, although we didn't exactly know how they would work. Now we are taking advantage of the latent capabilities of eFlight. Our main thrust is VHS and 64K connectivity through Inmarsat. We eventually expect up to 380K with Inmarsat."

The company says it will take advantage of faster speeds through services such as Globalsat once they become available. "From a commercial standpoint there is a lot of risk associated with those systems," cautioned Barnes. "Until the risk is mitigated we won't be bringing that technology to our customer base. We want to focus on capabilities available in 12 to 15 months."

Though eFlight was designed to be used with Pro Line 21, it is not limited to that system. "We can bring pieces of functionality to different airplanes," said Barnes. "You may not get all features, but you could get important parts."

eFlight capabilities will be seen first on CDUs on the Bombardier Continental, scheduled for certification in mid-2002. They will then apply to any Pro Line fit.