Avionics
Avionics Advancing Slowly but Surely into the Future
Recent developments presage some compelling new products
Garmin G3000 Prime flight deck
Garmin’s G3000 Prime flight deck adds large touchscreens to the entire cockpit.

While it might seem that avionics design had reached a plateau with few significant advances, this year has seen some interesting developments from new integrated touchscreen flight decks to the practical application of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of autothrottles in smaller airplanes.

Integrated Flight Decks

Garmin announced its latest integrated flight deck—G3000 Prime—just before this year’s NBAA-BACE in October. For many years, Garmin has employed touchscreens as avionics controllers and more recently has offered touchscreen main displays with its TXi avionics. Now, the G3000 Prime flight deck is bringing touchscreens to integrated flight decks with 14-inch edge-to-edge touch displays in the primary and multifunction display positions and improved pilot interfaces that make the system even easier for pilots to manage.