Without access to the Nav Database, those aircraft will no longer be Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) aircraft.
Duncan Aviation is encouraging its customers with a Honeywell Aerospace FMZ-2000 Flight Management System to make sure their software is upgraded to version 6.1 or higher prior to September 30, 2022. After September 2022, owners/operators who have not upgraded their software to version 6.1 or higher will lose access to the Nav Database.
Senior Avionics Representative Adrian Chene said, “Once you lose it, owners/operators won’t be able to fly flight plans that involve GPS coordinates. For all intents and purposes, without access to the Nav Database, those aircraft will no longer be Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) aircraft. So, when Air Traffic Control says, for instance, to proceed to Echo and clear to final, you’ll have to look up the coordinates for Echo and manually enter them. In this day and age, when you’re flying a jet, those waypoints come up far too quickly for pilots to waste long minutes searching for a waypoint’s coordinates, cross-checking charts, and fiddling around to manually enter them.”
How owners/operators upgrade to version 6.1 of the software depends on the avionics configuration in the aircraft. For some aircraft, the flight management system equipment itself will need to be upgraded, and for others, only the software version will require an upgrade.
