Posted by John McHale
PHOENIX, 29 March 2010. David Seymour, senior vice president, technical operations for US Airways says that the industry needs more robust avionics standards and better avionics software testing to eliminate aircraft downtime.
Seymour made his comments during the keynote address at the 2010 Avionics Maintenance Conference (AMC) in Phoenix.
Many standards created in the early 1980s are not robust enough to handle the complicated avionics systems being integrated today, Seymour told the AMC audience.
The standard ARINC 741 is an example where the older standards fall a bit short, he continued. Seymour related that when US Airways engineers connected a new voice and data communication system to the satellite using ARINC 741, it caused the whole system to fail.
After extensive research it was determined that the failure was due to the ARINC 741's loose requirements and not the fault of any one equipment supplier, he said.
Avionics software implementation also needs to be more efficient, Seymour said. Every time a new operating system or support package is released it is supposed to be "the be all and end all," but ends up causing just as many problems as other systems when first integrated, he added.
Integrating new software affects pilots who have to learn the new system and the upgrade also can cause hours of downtime because of constant revisions, Seymour continued. This is then passed on to passengers thought flight delays and cancellations, he added.
Many times the software takes two hours to upload and if a power failure occurs, "the whole process has to start over," Seymour said.
Avionics component suppliers need to make sure they take care of software testing on the front end before shipping their product to aircraft operators, Seymour warned.
In terms of software news, Seymour noted that US Airways is adding electronic flight bag (EFB) technology with airport moving map applications to 20 of their Airbus A319s and EFBs with Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) applications to some of their A330 aircraft.
The EFB systems are being implemented under two Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) programs, he added.
