The Cockpit of the Future is Fully Digital
Updated: Apr 15, 2021
The skies above us are going to get even more crowded in the next 10 years, with passenger airplanes, military jets and unmanned aircraft sharing the congested skies.
A glimpse of the future cockpit.
Experts are predicting air travel and passengers will double in number.
Yet demand for environmental sustainability and reducing carbon footprint will be the goal of many involved in the aviation industry.
French aerospace company Thales may have the solution.
Thales recently unveiled a flight management system, it says will help aircraft and airlines meet their goals in managing targets
The Thales PureFlyt, is touted as the Flight Management System (FMS) of the future.
Thales says it is strategically designed to efficiently manage aircraft in a connected aerospace ecosystem and in increasingly crowded skies.
Thales says this system will make airlines ready to fly at a time when millions of aircraft are moving in the skies.
Thales said it developed an entirely connected FMS, designed to offer airframers and airlines the best combination of safety, security, and fuel and operations efficiency.
An airline captain putting PureFlyt to the test at Thales Avionics in Toulouse, France
For flight crews, PureFlyt will allow them to make better decisions using more sources of information, will bring improved performance and reactivity to the aircraft during complex phases of flight and will calculate alternative trajectories in real time to propose or react quickly to changes of plan.
Thales believes, it is vital to provide pilots with the right information at the right time to increase trust in the computed trajectory, enhancing efficiency and reducing pilot workload throughout all flight phases.
“By computing and sharing vast amounts of data, PureFlyt will make flights safer, greener, easier for the pilots to manage” said Jean-Paul Ebanga, Thales Vice-President Flight Avionics. Mr Ebanga further said, this technology will be “more profitable for airlines and, all this, ultimately for the full benefits of passengers”
One of the core innovations making PureFlyt a game changer in the FMS world is its ability to draw on both onboard and open-world data, such as weather information.
By combining the integrity of the FMS and the agility and power of Electronic Flight Bag flight functionalities, aircraft trajectory can be permanently controlled, adapted and enhanced, resulting in optimised flight, decreased fuel consumption and improved passenger comfort.
“By computing and sharing vast amounts of data, PureFlyt will make flights safer, greener, easier for the pilots to manage, more profitable for airlines and, all this, ultimately for the full benefits of passengers.” said Mr. Ebanga.
Thales Pureflyt has been stress-tested using artificial intelligence technologies to simulate 2 billion test cases. This is equivalent of 100 million actual flight hours.
PureFlyt has also been designed to be cyber-secure and future-proof, accommodating the implementation of concepts such as the Initial 4D (I4D) trajectory management methods currently being researched by SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) in the EU and NextGen in the US.
By increasing the accuracy of flight in four dimensions, the fourth dimension being time, PureFlyt will enable more effectiveness in maintaining optimal distance between aircraft, particularly in the demanding phases of departure and approach.
PureFlyt will be available for entry into service in 2024, for both linefit and retrofit.