FeaturedNews

Honeywell to supply flight deck technologies to Vertical Aerospace

Hon­ey­well will sup­ply flight deck tech­nolo­gies for Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s eVTOL demon­stra­tor air­craft pro­gramme, fol­low­ing a let­ter of intent which names the com­pa­ny as the provider of dis­plays, vehi­cle man­age­ment con­trols and oper­at­ing sys­tem

The agree­ment extends the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two com­pa­nies, fol­low­ing an agree­ment to equip Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s demon­stra­tor with Hon­ey­well’s Com­pact Fly-By-Wire Sys­tem and flight con­trol soft­ware, which was signed in 2019.

Stéphane Fymat, Vice Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, UAS/UAM, Hon­ey­well Aero­space, said: “One of the most impor­tant out­comes of this pro­gramme will be the suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion of sim­pli­fied vehi­cle oper­a­tions, which essen­tial­ly is about mak­ing these air­craft more intu­itive and flat­ten­ing the learn­ing curve to safe­ly fly them.

“Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has been a won­der­ful part­ner, and we’re excit­ed to be part of its demon­stra­tor air­craft to address this chal­lenge and, in doing so, help move the entire indus­try for­ward.”

This new pro­gramme will help Ver­ti­cal Aero­space under­stand flight char­ac­ter­is­tics, sys­tem require­ments and the flight deck user inter­face to fur­ther the devel­op­ment of its urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) vehi­cle.

It also includes sev­er­al oth­er tech­nolo­gies present in the front end of the air­craft. These include mul­ti-touch dis­plays, avion­ics sys­tem con­trols, avion­ics soft­ware and the vehi­cle oper­at­ing sys­tem.

These tech­nolo­gies will work togeth­er with oth­er sys­tems onboard the air­craft to make the air­craft sim­pler to oper­ate than a tra­di­tion­al air­plane or heli­copter, while still ensur­ing safe­ty of the oper­a­tor and oth­er occu­pants. This type of ‘sim­pli­fied vehi­cle oper­a­tion’ will be a trans­for­ma­tive next step in the UAM indus­try.

Michael Cer­ven­ka, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “Ver­ti­cal is well advanced in the devel­op­ment of its next-gen­er­a­tion, high-per­for­mance, pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing vehi­cle.

“We are excit­ed at the prospect of broad­en­ing our already fan­tas­tic part­ner­ship with Hon­ey­well, enabling our vehi­cles to lever­age not only Honeywell’s state of the art flight con­trol sys­tems, but also to mar­ry these with the very lat­est in intu­itive and safe flight deck tech­nolo­gies.”

Ear­li­er this year, Hon­ey­well formed a new busi­ness unit ded­i­cat­ed to the grow­ing Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tems and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty indus­tries. And the com­pa­ny also begun in-flight test­ing of sen­sors that will guide urban air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles to land with­out pilot inter­ven­tion.

Where­as Ver­ti­cal Aero­space teased an image of its lat­est eVTOL air­craft on social media last week, and has already devel­oped two con­cepts — named POC and Ser­aph.

Avatar photo

Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769