Bombardier’s Challenger 3500 cockpit. (Photo: Bombardier)
Demand for commercial and private travel in 2022 remains strong, but the companies making airplanes and providing services to meet that demand are continuing to experience unstable supply chain problems. The problems are not limited to aviation.
A report on the global supply chain crisis published by J.P. Morgan Research in May summarizes the issues occurring in aviation and other industry verticals resulting from a combination of factors that emerged during the pandemic including “shifts in demand, labor shortages and structural factors.” Two major avionics mandate delays in August and September reflect some of the factors cited by analysts.
These include Transport Canada’s delay to its ADS-B Out airspace mandate. That was followed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s delay to its GADSS-inspired emergency locator beacon mandate. Both civil aviation regulatory agencies cited “supply chain issues” and the availability of necessary equipment to meet their avionics mandate performance objectives as reasons for their delays. See the regulations section of this issue for more details on both.
Elsewhere in this issue, long-time contributor Anne Wainscott Sargent returns to analyze how business aviation in-flight connectivity service providers are responding to growth in the number of private jet flights and the associated bandwidth and data those passengers and flight crews are using on a per-flight basis.
Dave Hughes returns for his second contribution to summarize business and general aviation aircraft antenna technology trends. Jessica Reed provides an in-depth look at how eVTOL developers are approaching cockpit systems designs and provides a Q&A with Horizon, an eVTOL developer based in California.
Finally, I provide a look at the cockpit and cabin systems innovation featured on the Bombardier Challenger 3500 amid its entry into service. What did we miss? I hope to meet some of our readers at the NBAA BACE 2022 conference in Orlando this year. Thanks for reading!