Airbus has selected Honeywell’s Flight Management System (FMS) to meet the air traffic management needs of the future A320, A330, and A350 aircraft. With the new FMS, airline customers will achieve best-in-class operational efficiency, reliability, and safety. Additionally, the new FMS also incorporates connectivity with the outside world, including Electronic Flight Bags (EFB), to ease the pilot workload and enhance fuel savings with the use of real-time data.
“This win for Honeywell is a testament to Airbus’ confidence in our avionics systems. The new FMS combines multiple current FMS offerings for Airbus into one single solution for their A320, A330 and A350 platforms. Importantly, the new FMS hardware is 15 times more capable than current hardware and enables a path to future enhancements without hardware changes. Honeywell has been supplying flight management systems since Airbus’ first A300 went into service, and this win will extend our 35-year partnership well into the future,” according to Jim Currier, President, Electronic Solutions, Honeywell Aerospace.
Honeywell’s FMS family has already been deployed by Airbus on the A320, A330, A350, and A380 platforms. The new FMS is being developed to build upon millions of hours of Honeywell’s FMS legacy, with enhanced modularity, advanced functionality, and a multi-core processing platform. At the completion of development, the new FMS will be a standalone federated system, making it easier for operators to support the fleet.
The FMS will be offered as a single standardized hardware and software platform that can be used across the Airbus A320, A330, and A350 aircraft fleet with expected entry into service by end of 2026. A retrofit solution based on the same core hardware and common software is also planned for the A320 and A330 fleet of aircraft. An FMS provides the primary navigation, flight planning, and optimized route determination and en route guidance for an aircraft.