May 5 2010
The Airbus A380, A340/A330, and A320 aircraft family has selected the Air Data Inertial Reference System (ADIRS) of Honeywell as its inertial reference system.
The ADIRS provides navigational and flight control data for multiple aircraft systems by monitoring aircraft motion autonomously. Its precise enhanced navigation is a crucial part for state-of-the-art air traffic management functionalities that facilitate flying accurate satellite-enabled navigation approaches and more direct routing to airports in order to lower fuel expenses and flight delays.
There are three Air Data Inertial Reference Units (ADIRU) and every ADIRU has three quartz accelerometers and three ring laser gyros for accurate sensing of aircraft altitude and position. The ADIRS integrates data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the inertial sensors thereby providing complete availability of Required Navigation Performance methods, faster align times and automatic initialization.
Honeywell is a leading global vendor for high performing laser inertial systems for commercial aviation and has delivered over 60,000 such systems. Current systems utilize enhanced software features, quartz accelerometers and digital ring laser gyros to offer high precision flight vector, heading, velocity, altitude and related crucial information for aircraft systems.
Honeywell Aerospace’s Vice President for Airbus accounts Justice Ryan informed that his company’s ADIRS provides reliability that is more than twice that of competing systems, weighing 39 pounds less and averaging 40,000 service hours. He revealed that Honeywell ADIRS helps operators to save over $15,000 for each aircraft in a year in terms of fuel and maintenance costs.
Source: http://www.honeywell.com