During a March visit to Textron Aviation’s Wichita headquarters, AIN had an opportunity to fly the Pro Line Fusion-equipped King Air 250 and try out the first business aircraft equipped with touchscreen primary and multifunction displays. EBACE visitors can examine a Fusion-equipped King Air 250 in the static display area here at Palexpo. The aircraft I flew in Wichita belongs to Rockwell Collins and was used to certify the upgrade, which will be offered as a retrofit for Pro Line II- and 21-equipped King Airs and forward-fit in new King Air C90GTx, 250 and 350i/ER models.

The new avionics replace existing Pro Line 21 systems in new King Airs, and the most obvious difference between the previous and new flight decks is the orientation of the displays: portrait with Pro Line 21 and wider-view landscape with Fusion. Three 14-inch displays span the width of the instrument panel, filling what used to be blank or knob-filled space interspersed with the three Pro Line 21 displays. Gone are the Rockwell Collins FMS-3000 control display unit (CDU), two multi-segment caution advisory system (CAS) panels and the RTU-420 radio tuning unit. The flight control and audio control panels are retained. The result is a far more modern-looking cockpit but also a system with multiple interfaces, including touch on the panel displays, cursor control devices for each pilot, a QWERTY keyboard and some knobs and buttons. The touchscreens are the resistive type, which requires a more positive push to activate but also allows pilots to wear ordinary gloves, as opposed to the capacitive-style touchscreens found on consumer phones and tablets.

“When we first started flying, we thought the cursors were going to be primary,” said George Palmer, Rockwell Collins flight-test pilot and the demo pilot for our flight in the King Air 250. “We found out that the touch [displays] added a level of simplicity to the system that we’ve never had before. And you don’t have to know a lot about the system to make it operate. If you want to change something, you simply touch it. That’s all there is to it,” he said.

Flight Planning

Starting with flight planning, the first step is to press the FMS button on the multifunction keyboard panel, which replaces the FMS CDU in the console. Rockwell Collins designers chose to use a QWERTY layout for the keyboard, which I find easier to use because I spend so much time typing on that type of keyboard. The FMS button is one of nine quick-access buttons next to the keyboard that provide a shortcut to various functions.

The FMS function is where planning starts and, for simplicity, offers two pages: “plan” and “fly.” Planning matches the ATC clearance sequence to make the process more intuitive.

To enter data–for example, the origin airport–you first type the ID using the keyboard. The selected airport (in this case KICT) doesn’t automatically populate the “Orig” field, even though that field is highlighted. The typed characters show up in the bottom left side of the working window on the MFD, in a scratchpad area. Once information is in that scratchpad, you can put it in any allowed field. To insert the scratchpad “KICT” into the “Orig” field, touch that field on the display, and a small window pops up, asking whether you would like to copy or paste. Paste is the default highlight, and when you touch the “paste” button, the desired data is pasted into the “Orig” field.

This is an interesting way to make sure the pilot is certain about the data being entered, and I found it didn’t take long to get used to this philosophy. “It’s what you’re used to with a normal computer system,” said Palmer.

After entering the origin airport, estimated time of departure, cruise altitude and destination, you can flesh out the flight plan by adding departure and arrival procedures, waypoints, airways, transitions and approaches. The system walks the pilot through the process, and I found it simple to understand. Once the flight plan is done, touch the “Exec” (execute) button; the route is then displayed on the moving map.

Touching the weight-and-balance button brings that page up, and we entered our 3,000-pound fuel load and the weight for one passenger. Takeoff weight was just 21 pounds shy of the 12,500-pound mtow for the King Air 250. Some of the Fusion weight and space savings come from eliminating the traditional FMS and incorporating those hardware and software elements inside the touchscreen displays. The basic operating weight of the Pro Line 21 King Air 250, including one pilot, is 8,760 pounds, and with the full fuel load of 3,645 pounds that airplane has a payload of just 185 pounds. The Pro Line Fusion system weighs about 75 pounds less than the Pro Line 21 system, which will add some much needed full-fuel payload to the King Air 250.

After entering a few items on the displays, I soon came to appreciate the different ways of navigating around the big screens. Touch anywhere, and if there is something there that can be changed, a menu of options will pop up. If you’re not sure what items are touchable, just touch anywhere in the middle of the display, and everything that can be modified by touch will be highlighted in gray. Setting V speeds simply requires touching the bottom of the airspeed tape. Tapping any waypoint will offer, among other options, the availability of setting up a custom hold (if a published hold isn’t already there).

If for some reason you don’t want to reach out and touch a screen, moving around the screens or data fields is easy to do with one of two cursor control panels near the keyboard. The cursor knobs tilt to move a cross-shaped cursor on the displays, or you can even tab the cursor by twisting the outer knob. The inner knob is for character-by-character data entry and for scrolling menus up and down. Pushing the inner knob is the “enter” or “click” button. An unusual button on the cursor panel is an “esc” key, something I haven’t seen on any airplane but that is familiar to any computer user. The “esc” key simply “allows you to cancel an in-process edit, close a pop-up dialogue box or move the cursor back one level,” according to Rockwell Collins.

Tuning radios can be done in different ways. One is to use the tuning knob on the cursor control panel, which has the standard outer-knob MHz and inner-knob KHz convention and push/swap to toggle between primary and standby frequencies. Or there is a handy “Qiktune” button: to enter a frequency, type it into the scratchpad, then push the Qiktune button to enter it into the standby frequency field for whichever radio is selected on the audio panel. Changing a transponder code is simple: typing in the four-digit code and hitting Qiktune enters the code (after first switching the transponder on if it isn’t already running). If ATC asks for a code and ident, you simply type in the code then the “I” and hit Qiktune. “It’s that easy,” said Palmer.

Flying Fusion Touch

We set up the flight plan for departure from and return to Wichita’s newly renamed Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport with an initial climb to 5,000 feet. Rotation speed and V1 were 102 knots and V2 107, easily set up by touching the speed tape and entering the numbers. While setting the altimeter on either the pilot’s or copilot’s PFD sets both, you still have to dial in the baro setting for the L-3 GH3900 standby instrument mounted at the top of the glareshield, which is where one of the old CAS panels used to be located.

CAS messages are inhibited until the aircraft reaches 60 knots, so only red warning messages will illuminate until reaching 400 feet. A new feature is an audio callout for engine problems, Palmer added, “which it didn’t have before because it had the old annunciator panels. If something goes wrong with the left engine, it’ll say ‘left engine’ or ‘right engine.’”

After taking off, we climbed at 160 kias, eventually leveling off at 8,500 feet west of Wichita. Palmer pointed out some features of the avionics as we flew, such as the ease of touching a waypoint then selecting the “direct to” button followed by the “nav” button on the autopilot. “You see how there are no more buried CDU pages,” he said. “We didn’t even have to go to these quick-access buttons or bring up any menus.”

This King Air 250 is equipped with Sirius XM weather, and while XM weather images can be overlaid on the moving map, they can’t share the space with the onboard Rockwell Collins turbulence-detection radar. However, it’s easy to run XM Nexrad images on the MFD and the radar on the PFD–useful for comparing the strategic (XM) and tactical (radar) views. For a long-range look at the XM picture at a greater distance, you can either range the map out or slide the map around with a finger on the display. When finished evaluating the Nexrad picture, just push the “center map” button to return to the airplane-centered view.

Palmer selected some nearby special-use airspace overlays then showed how touching them pulls up applicable information. A lot of customization is available, including display of high or low airways and VORs, waypoints, altitude limits at waypoints and so on. “I don’t have to go head-down,” he said. “It’s all head-up; situational awareness is perfect for the pilot to see the information.”

While you’re flying a flight plan, changes are easy to make, although the touchscreens don’t allow rubber-banding a new waypoint as can be done on an iPad flight planner. On the moving map, touching any existing waypoint brings up a menu of options for that waypoint. Or you can simply move the cursor to anyplace and go directly to that new user-created waypoint. When airways are visible, you can place the cursor at any point on the airway and Fusion will draw a route to join the airway at that point. “Look at all the stuff you just did,” Palmer said, “and you didn’t have to go to the legs list [on an FMS]. It’s all easy to understand.”

Holds are similarly simple. Pressing on a waypoint offers holds as an option. If ATC asks for a present-position hold, just press the airplane symbol on the map and holding at that position is an option too. For a hold in a specific direction and non-standard turns, just type in the inbound course, slash and “L” for left turns (for example: 234/L), touch the correct field on the display and then “execute.”

Approach Setup​

With the destination airport set in the flight plan, Pro Line Fusion offers a simple visual way to select an approach. By dialing the range below 50 nm, feathers for the available approaches grow on the destination airport. It’s not necessary to dial the range down further, because touching any of the feathers selects that approach. Where there are parallel runways, as is the case at Wichita, it doesn’t matter where you touch the feathers on the screen. Just touch both feathers, even if they are close together, and the display shows both approaches. In this case, we selected the ILS 1R with vectors, then touched the “execute” button, and that’s it. All we had to do was select the approach button on the autopilot, then after we intercepted the final approach course, Fusion automatically switched from FMS guidance to the ILS.

To make it even simpler, once we reached 31 nm from the destination, Fusion painted a cyan final course line on the display and automatically tuned the ILS frequency.

Before we turned back toward Wichita, we ran into some moderate chop, and I tested the functionality of the touchscreens in turbulence. The displays’ four edges are beveled to provide a steady, grippable surface. I was able to plant my finger where needed to actuate the touchscreens in the moderate chop. “When it’s really rough,” Palmer said, “it’s probably better just to reach down here and [use the cursor and knobs], but it’s not bad. With these beveled edges you can grab hold. I tend to use my thumb a little bit more, but you can do it either way.”

We set up the windows the way Palmer prefers, with a full-window synthetic-vision view on the PFD and the moving map and approach chart on the MFD. I experimented with placing the chart on a half-screen on the PFD, and this would probably be my preferred view. Other options include checklists, traffic on the TCAS, flight plan and so on. “Some guys like four windows,” he said, “but to me that’s just too much. This system’s got a lot of different ways of doing things. At first it seems to make it a little complicated, but once you learn the system, you have that freedom to do different things.”

As we descended and turned toward the final approach course, the Rockwell Collins white dome on the synthetic-vision display showed us exactly where to look for the airport. Emanating from the dome, the cyan final course line was now right ahead, just where it should be and giving us a satisfying sense of situational awareness confirmation. “We see the airport out there,” Palmer said, “we see the extended course line; you couldn’t get better situational awareness.”

At 11 miles from the final approach fix, ATC cleared us for the ILS 1R approach, and we set the heading bug then pushed the approach button on the autopilot. I watched as the FMS automatically switched to the ILS for guidance. As we got closer to the runway, the white dome gradually turned opaque, then the synthetic vision filled in the details of the runway.

The wind was blowing across the runway from the northwest, and it was still a little bumpy down low as the King Air crabbed along the final approach course. I switched off the autopilot to get more used to the King Air’s handling before the landing and followed the flight director along the ILS. As we crossed the outer marker, the marker beacon flashed next to the top of the glideslope indicator on the PFD.

Slowing to the 99-knot ref speed as the runway slid under the nose, I eased off the power. Palmer made sure I kept the nose down toward the runway–I tend to want to flare too much when I fly larger airplanes–then he helped me touch down smoothly on the mains as I pulled the power levers briefly into reverse.

While I was looking out the window during the landing, I could see after we touched down that the synthetic vision view perfectly matched the outside view. Fusion automatically pulled up the taxi diagram after we slowed.

Touchscreen Impressions

The King Air 250 is the first turbine-powered airplane I’ve flown with a full panel-mounted touchscreen display system; there are plenty of airplanes equipped with touchscreen-controlled Garmin GTN navigators, and Avidyne’s IFD series is just starting to be installed. Experimental aircraft have had touchscreens for years. In the business aviation arena, until the release of the Pro Line Fusion touchscreen displays, the only option has been touchscreen controls, such as Garmin’s GTCs on the G2000 through G5000 systems. These work well and are intuitive and well suited to larger cockpits. I’ve tried Gulfstream’s touchscreen controllers (by Honeywell) in the new G500/G600 cockpit–in a simulator, of course–and these, too, bring new levels of operational simplicity to complex avionics systems.

The oft-heard caveat about touchscreen panel-mounted displays is that they aren’t optimum for larger aircraft because cockpits are bigger and pilots tend to sit farther from the panels. Having flown the Pro Line Fusion touchscreen system, I’m not sure I agree with that claim.

My initial impressions are that using the Pro Line Fusion touchscreens is natural and uncomplicated. I never felt like I was sitting too far to reach the displays, both the PFD and MFD, and even during some moderate chop I could activate everything on the displays or use the hardware cursor, knobs and buttons with no trouble. Will pilots sit too far back in a business jet to reach touchscreen panel displays? Not everyone agrees that this is the case; after all, when a pilot adjusts everything in the cockpit for correct reach of all controls, he or she is usually sitting close enough to reach most of the panel displays. Copilots, however, might sit farther aft. This issue is not, in my opinion, much of an impediment to implementation of panel touchscreens in business jets.

With Pro Line Fusion, Rockwell Collins has clearly cracked the code for big touchscreen displays in business aircraft, and once more pilots get used to Pro Line Fusion touchscreens, I’m betting that more aircraft manufacturers are going to seek this kind of technology to keep their customers happy.

“There is a lot interest in Pro Line Fusion touchscreens,” confirmed Adam Evanschwartz, Rockwell Collins director of business aviation marketing.