Anthem Cockpit System Is What Pilots Needed to Make Flying Fun Again

Quite big words spoken by Mike Madsen, Honeywell Aerospace CEO back in October, but since they come from one of the best companies in this business, we tend to kind of believe them. And that belief is reinforced even more by the initial details available on this little something called Anthem.

Every (boy) child dreams at one point in his life about becoming a pilot. About having the ability to control winged metal beasts that move, through the air, faster than a little brain considers even possible, the skill to perform aerobatics, and the audacity of shooting down enemies.

Then, said child grows up, and either finds out that for whatever reason he cannot be a pilot, or becomes one and realizes being a pilot is a much more complicated and less romantic job than dreamt of.

If you go and search on specialized websites for pilot job openings, you’ll find under responsibilities a very long list of things to do, other than actually flying. Pilots have to create a flight plan, ensure the fuel levels, carry out pre-flight checks, and even “ensure noise regulations are followed during take-off and landing,” as one post states. At the end of each flight, the aircraft’s logbook must be filled, and a report filed. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

All of that, and much more, needs to be done from inside or near the plane. So, if for passengers a two-hour flight is a two-hour flight, for a pilot it’s much longer, and not nearly as relaxing.

Most of this reality is the result of available technology which, albeit very advanced at the moment, still requires a hands-on approach. Luckily, advancements made in recent years, especially when it comes to connectivity, might forever change piloting.

Enter the Honeywell Anthem flight deck, a piece of technology described as the “aviation industry's first cloud-connected cockpit system.” Emphasis, of course, on cloud-connected, as that’s where the magic happens.

Anthem is an always-on system that includes specialized software, and hardware in the form of 2K resolution displays. Honeywell made it in such a way as to be scalable and suitable to a variety of aircraft types. Both the software and hardware can be customized to fit and suit anything from cargo planes to all those fancy new urban air mobility gizmos we keep hearing about, including autonomous ones.

The system is first and foremost meant to eliminate the need for the physical presence of pilots and even mechanics when performing some activities that can be done remotely, such as the data transfer of maintenance status and flight plans.

What’s more important is that the aircraft doesn’t even have to be powered on for pilots to gain remote access to info they need prior to a flight. From afar, they can even load the flight plan, or set up the flight deck.

Another feature of the thing is that in brings into one place all individual support systems, things like fuel, maintenance, or catering, eliminating the need for multiple, third-party apps or websites. The pilot can now simply notify all parties involved in due time (and, you guessed it, remotely) about the flight plan, including about real-time changes caused by unforeseen events.

Inside the cockpit, Anthem presents itself as a “smartphone-like, easy-to-use interface,” whose layout can be customized and even reconfigured to display whatever info or metric the pilot deems necessary. It also uses what Honeywell calls the “cleanest, most functional symbology available today.”

Separately, Anthem’s integrated web browser allows pilots to see inside the cockpit images from airports’ live weather cameras or live radar imagery. Hours before landing, it can send data to maintenance crews about possible malfunctions, so that the people on the ground are prepared with the required parts and tools as soon as the airplane arrives.

The Anthem was just detailed by Honeywell earlier this year, having been shown at the NBAA Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in October, so it’s not exactly widespread at the moment. The first companies to use it are Vertical Aerospace and Lilium, for their VA-X4 and Lilium Jet, respectively.