A major strategic thrust into the business aviation arena that includes a revitalization of the Bendix/King product line is being unveiled here by AlliedSignal Aerospace.

Billing itself as "the safety and situational awareness company"--which translates into "hazard alert"--AlliedSignal plans to roll out a raft of products under the Bendix/King name to warn flight crews of such dangers to flight as terrain, conflicting traffic, windshear, turbulence, and bad weather ahead. These can all be displayed on a single-screen Integrated Hazard Alert System.

"This is absolutely a major thrust into the business aviation market," Frank Daly, president of Avionics & Lighting at AlliedSignal Aerospace told Show News. "We intend to recapture our leadership position; we've not been as aggressive as we should have been and could have been with situational awareness products--safety, hazard detection and hazard alerting.

"One of the most exciting frontiers in aerospace is avionics. You can redesign wings and fuselages, but there's a great deal of untapped potential in avionics. We're riding the coattails of consumer electronics--with more memory, displays and computing capability--to capture technology and roll it into the avionics marketplace. In cockpits there is a tremendous amount of room for growth and providing value-added information, not necessarily just data, but information to the flight crew."
If Daly sounds enthusiastic, he is. Among his strategic goals:

o Revitalization of the Bendix/King line. "We've had that name for a number of years but been somewhat remiss in our investment in avionics. We are correcting that in a big way," he said. "We're sparing no financial horses to bring new products to market very quickly; we've got a road map through the next five to seven years to make those products very contemporary."

o Moving hazard alert products downmarket into business and general aviation. "We're going to take the safety leadership position we have in air transport and make those products more affordable," Daly said. For example, AlliedSignal plans to market early next year a Mark VIII Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) with worldwide database for a catalog price around $33,000. It doesn't have its own display but will interface with AlliedSignal's own or other manufacturers' multi-function screens.
Other product developments include low-cost active interrogation Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) for $20,000 or less, and enhancement of the GNS-XL Flight Management System (FMS) with much improved graphics, terrain maps, and a search and rescue function.

o Introducing a series of multifunction displays (MFDs) from the low end Bendix/King KMD 150 for general aviation and light turbine aircraft to the top-of-the-line 850 which could combine EGPWS, TCAS and weather radar, and which will interface with AlliedSignal's new weather data uplink. Advances in "distributed processing" computer technology will allow functions to be added individually by adding computer cards to the black box; for example, a operator could buy the MFD with a traffic and navigation display, and add EGPWS later on by buying the feature as a plug-in card. Daly sees a large potential for MFDs in turboprop and light turbine aircraft, and for retrofit in aircraft that do not have "elegant" integrated cockpits.

AlliedSignal believes many avionics features of the air transport world can be offered more affordably, as the "Big Boys" often insist on expensive Arinc compatibility or military spec systems that restrict the way a black box is designed and built. Freed from these restraints, AlliedSignal can be more flexible and innovative in designing new equipment that matches or exceeds the air transport black boxes in quality and capability.

"There is a convergence of the air transport and other markets," Daly said, that is driving down the cost of sophisticated avionics. "For a long time costs in the air transport market have been prohibitive for business and general aviation.

"You can't sell a device that approaches 20% of the hull value. But you can reduce costs to two percent of the hull value with avionics that really do enhance safety and perhaps airspace capacity."