Honeywell Delivers 20,000th LASEREF and Closes in on 100,000 Inertial Reference Systems

Honeywell’s LASEREF VI IRS – The Market Leader

Honeywell’s LASEREF VI Inertial Reference System, the most compact and lightest system in its performance class, hit a major manufacturing milestone with its 20,000th delivery this year. The LASEREF VI is the latest version of a long-lineage of successful Inertial Reference Systems built by Honeywell, which projects it will roll the 100,000th unit from this family off the line by the end of 2018. With industry-leading production on-time and quality performance, you can count on Honeywell to meet your industrialization needs for commercial inertial reference products.

The flagship LASEREF inertial system has been certified on over 30 platforms, most recently of which were the on-plan certifications on Boeing's 787-10 in January and Embraer's E-Jet E2 in March. Honeywell’s program management and engineering teams continue to meet every major milestone by flawlessly delivering on program commitments and ensuring that the inertial systems are ready to support aircraft bench testing, flight testing, and entry into service plans.

Field Proven Technology

Over decades of inertial navigation experience, Honeywell’s civilly certified inertial reference systems have recorded more than 4 billion — (yes, billion) — hours of reliable operation in both fixed-wing and rotorcraft commercial aircraft on nearly every major air transport, regional and long-range business jet.

History of Innovation – What is Next?

Honeywell’s proprietary Inertial/GPS Hybrid (HIGH-Step II) software supports 100 percent worldwide availability of Required Navigation Performance – Authorization Required (RNP-AR) < 0.1 operations, which provides enhanced safety, reliability and fuel efficiency even in the most complex terrain, traffic or weather conditions.

Soon, the world’s most successful inertial reference system is going to get even better, with implementation of new software features to bolster navigation where GPS is vulnerable, enhance the maintenance experience and improve usability. This software upgrade launched in 2018 and is planned to be certified in 2020.

Value Delivered

With tens of thousands of systems in the air and new platforms constantly entering service, Honeywell’s navigation engineers are continuously developing enhancements to support advanced operations in more challenging environments, improve pilot situational awareness, minimize schedule disruptions, and optimize the installation, maintenance, and support processes. Honeywell then seeks to make those enhancements available to its entire customer base, where possible, to ensure its customers always have access to the latest in world-class innovations that are typically first-introduced on newer production platforms.

Stay tuned for more details of future enhancements in work by Honeywell to extend the leadership of this ground-breaking product family.

Benefits to Stakeholders

Benefits to operators include reduced pilot workload, enhanced safety and situational awareness, and improved flight operational efficiency. OEMs appreciate the peace of mind that they’re getting a system with industry-leading features, which comes from a core design that has been approved numerous times by every major certification authority, as well as a demonstrated track record of program performance and delivery that is unmatched in industry. This simplifies the certification process and assures OEMs this critical system will be available when they need it to support new aircraft developments, modifications and deliveries, while also ensuring their operator customers will be taken care of through the life of their aircraft.

To find out more, visit our LASEREF page.