On a cold and blustery Sunday night last month the high-pitched whine of a Gulfstream G450 cut the air above Vermont’s Mount Snow ski resort. The sound must have surprised anyone who heard it. After all, this wasn’t Aspen or Jackson Hole. Mount Snow Airport’s tiny 2,650-foot north-south runway is far too short to accommodate a 70,000-pound business jet; the occasional light piston twin is about the biggest airplane residents are used to hearing or seeing overhead. And when 35-knot crosswinds and blowing snow are buffeting the field, the approach always
remains dark and silent.
But this particular airplane, one of the first to be fitted with Gulfstream’s just-certified synthetic-vision primary flight display (SV-PFD), wasn’t there to pick up some snowbound company chief executive and his family after a weekend ski holiday. Rather, it was a chance to show the media the production version of a technology that Gulfstream and Honeywell test pilots have been honing for the last two years–a high-tech journey, to be sure, and one that is culminating with the introduction of SV-PFD in Gulfstream’s top models spanning the G350/450/500/550.
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