Goodrich is introducing its new cockpit data management solution (CDMS) portfolio at the Paris show (see Goodrich Pavilion & Aerocafé, B337), including its SmartDisplay electronic flight bag with wireless network capability. As well as the CDMS, Goodrich’s 2009 product display includes an electric brake, a helicopter rotating drive shaft and the DB-110 reconnaissance pod.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, which has acquired more than 40 other companies over the past 16 years and now has “one of the most strategically diversified portfolios in the industry” and a $7.1 billion annual turnover, said, “The CDMS portfolio is a turnkey integrated package of hardware, software and support services that allows flight crews and flight ops to perform critical ground and in-flight data management tasks faster and more efficiently.” The CDMS components are also upgradable for future technologies such as the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen air traffic management system.
Goodrich is so old that it was at the original 1909 Paris Air Show at the Grand Palais, which saw Glenn Curtis racing his Curtiss pusher aircraft. That had Goodrich tires–as did Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis aircraft when it touched down at Le Bourget in 1927, at the end of the first transatlantic crossing by air.
The company is also celebrating its half-century in the space business. On June 25, 1959, the world’s first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellite was launched with a Goodrich ISR systems payload as part of the classified Corona project to spy on the Soviet Bloc. These days it can boast the fine guidance sensor of the Hubble Space Telescope, fitted during Space Shuttle Atlantis’s repair mission last month, and roles in a range of space projects from GPS III to the James Webb Space Telescope.
Seats are another Goodrich specialty, and the company’s interiors unit in Colorado Springs is celebrating its selection to supply Airbus with 16g-cabin attendant seats for its new A350XWB airliner. It will also be supplying nacelles/thrust-reverser assemblies, wheels and carbon brakes, air data and ice-detection systems, and the external video system for that aircraft.
Goodrich is also a major contributor to the rival Boeing 787 program. “More than a dozen critical systems are onboard the first flight test aircraft,” said a spokesman.
The company has come to the show with a freshly signed five-year contract from British Airways covering support for engine controls on the airline’s Boeing 767 and 747 fleets–representing a total of 300 Rolls-Royce RB211-524 engines. During 2008, maintenance, repair and overhaul accounted for 36 percent of total revenues.
