Pilots’ choice: Experience AW139 Synthetic Vision

Situational awareness is everything for helicopter pilots flying missions that range from executive and VIP transport, offshore oil and gas transport, law enforcement, emergency medical services, and search and rescue operations.

The latest AW139 avionics upgrades from Honeywell Aerospace offer superior map and primary flight display (PFD) symbology to provide better terrain and obstacle awareness, while enabling quick creation of customized routes and pilot-defined approaches.  

We give pilots the most advanced PFD symbology with a track-centered view so they can fly more precise lateral and vertical flight paths and improve safety, even over flat terrain, water and daytime visual meteorological conditions.

For Leonardo AW139 pilots, Smart View offers an intuitive and highly accurate view of the operating environment, with range rings and grid lines not available on other avionics systems. Smart View allows quick estimating of distances to landing areas and fast and easy crosschecking of primary means of navigation.

With these enhancements it becomes much easier to make more precise decelerations to hover over runways and landing areas. According to an experienced AW139 pilot who flies with a large VIP fleet in the Middle East, “Smart View SVS makes it very easy to setup approaches on specific lateral paths and descent angles. It’s incredible.”

The laterally and vertically conformal SVS remains track-centered, keeping the flight path symbol (FPS) in view until very low speeds or high crab angles. Integrated with other map information, these features help pilots stay ahead of the helicopter, even during challenging, steep approaches.

The SmartView upgrade helps AW139 pilots intuitively interpret and process flight path information in a way very similar to what they already do naturally when looking outside the cockpit. Smart View is the only system that allows easy transitions between a heading based PFD display and a more helpful track-centered display, in which obstacles and terrain displays aren’t cutoff on the left or right during crosswinds.

According to Jason Bialek, Technical Sales for Honeywell Aerospace, “Pilots of all experience levels appreciate what SVS allows them to do.  It provides an intuitive way to precisely control decels, and lateral and vertical flight paths during a wide variety of approach and landing maneuvers and weather conditions.”

While the latest AW139 upgrades center on SVS, there are several other improvements that come along with the offering.

Synthetic Vision System (SVS): provides a bright, contrasted, textured, conformal and intuitive representation of the outside world, with range rings and well depicted helipads, elevated helipads and airport environments that are visible over 20 miles away even at lower altitudes. No other PFD or SVS display can match what is now available on the AW139.

Flight-Path Symbol display and improved Flight Director: Improved symbology allows pilots to more effectively monitor the auto flight system through a variety of operations, including Transition down to Hover (TDH), Decel (DCL) and lateral and vertical modes. With the new collective cue, which intuitively matches the expected changes in the helicopter’s flight path as seen with the flight path symbol, collective inputs during maneuvering become smaller and more precise. This also allows better monitoring of the autoflight system’s collective movements or power changes.

Enhanced map display quality: with improved layering controls pilots can elect to show high quality water and land depictions, naturally matching sectional or VFR chart type representations without clutter alongside TAWS like depictions of terrain and obstacles as emerging threats along the flight path.  The map display is well integrated with the SVS display on the PFD.

Improved map information: Provides enhanced map displays including new map layers like major and minor roads, railroads, cities, improved obstacle display, nearest airport function, airport and waypoint information windows, and other helpful improvements.

Custom waypoints (map designator) and custom approaches (CST): with an easy to access custom waypoint designator, and custom approaches (CST) capability, flying a custom lateral and vertical path into any landing area becomes much easier.

Enhanced Connectivity: with an upgraded ADG-400 data gateway flight plan sharing from Foreflight to the AW139 FMS is now possible.

The latest AW139 avionics system provides a practical way to bring new capabilities to the cockpit, while building on a proven avionics platform pilots already know. The result provides pilots with more intuitive displays that provide better information allowing them to fly more precisely and efficiently, improving safety of operations.

“These newest AW139 upgrades provide pilots with easy to use capability that improves their flying all the time, not just in challenging weather conditions,” Bialek said. “Ultimately, the entire Honeywell Aerospace team wants pilots, who are trusted by their passengers every day, to be able to focus on what matters most…flying the helicopter, and safely completing the mission, every time.”

Ready to bring the benefits of SVS to your AW139? Contact Honeywell Aerospace to learn more and start planning your upgrade path.