When Rockwell Collins launched its new Fusion avionics system on the Bombardier XRS (now the Global 6000) at NBAA 2007, I was completely mistaken about what this new avionics suite was all about. It was hardly my fault though. New products in our industry have always been associated with new stuff, new displays, radios, radars, antennas and so forth, so I naturally assumed that Fusion was more of the same, a product revamping that would take the company’s already highly regarded Pro Line 21 system and give it a shiny upgrade.
As nice as that sounds, this view sold Fusion short. The new product suite, as it turned out, wasn’t about products at all, but it was, rather, a new way of thinking about avionics, an architectural and systems approach that, it’s no exaggeration to say, has changed the way that Rockwell Collins thinks about avionics and the way, increasingly, that its customers do as well.
