Duncan Aviation's satellite facility at St. Paul Downtown airport in St. Paul, Minnesota recently installed the Garmin G5000 integrated flight deck in two Citation Excel aircraft. After removing the entire cockpit, the crew in St. Paul installed the G5000, which includes bright, high-resolution colour displays, touchscreen interfaces with audible feedback, automatic flight guidance and control systems, GPS, SVS and real-time weather, chart, traffic and terrain information on the large moving maps that provide pilots with situational awareness.

“When the customers picked up the first aircraft, they flew it in the late evening to Missoula, Montana, and the pilot told us the SVS showing the mountainous terrain was amazing in its detail,” says manager of the Duncan Aviation St Paul satellite Tom Lieser. “When the company's chief pilot picked up the second aircraft, he told me that the new flight deck makes flying fun again. They are really pleased with this new system.”

The fully scalable Garmin G5000 system and the STC that covers all equipment and installation, includes provisions for future upgrades, such as Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC).

“We're pleased to offer our customers a cockpit retrofit that includes such powerful, reliable features,” notes Duncan Aviation's regional avionics sales manager Michael Kussatz. “The Garmin G5000 is a fully integrated avionics package that features less cluttered instrumentation while simultaneously giving pilots a great deal more situational awareness of their environment.”

Duncan Aviation routinely does everything it can to accommodate customers' schedules, and this installation for a first-time customer was no exception.

“Even though the first installation spanned three major holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day, we were able to accommodate the customer's schedule,” Lieser continues. “We delivered the first aircraft in mid January, and the second in mid March. We're also fortunate that customers of the Duncan Aviation satellite network enjoy the full support of the entire Duncan Aviation enterprise. For these installations, we augmented our team here in St. Paul with technicians from our satellites in Atlanta, Georgia and Kansas City, Missouri, and techs from the full-service facility in Lincoln, Nebraska.”

Although removing and replacing the entire avionics suite in a cockpit is no small feat, the customer requested this upgrade because the avionics system was out-dated and in need of continuous repairs and the downtime was getting costly.

“They wanted to start over with a newer system that wasn't going to continue racking up repair costs, and we recommended the Garmin G5000 integrated flight deck because of its power and reliability and because the installation takes about eight weeks,” Kussatz concludes.