G5000 approved for Beechjet 400

The G5000 upgrade features three 12-inch, high-resolution display screens plus dual touchscreen display controllers, Garmin’s FliteCharts or Jeppesen’s ChartView electronic charts, plus Garmin’s SafeTaxi and SurfaceWatch for heightened awareness and voice alerts when entering taxiways, runways, and other critical areas of the airport environment. SurfaceWatch can even alert pilots should they enter the wrong runway, or a runway that is too short.

The G5000 can perform RNP 0.3 approaches, as well as VNAV, Flight Level Change, and other high-end functions via the system’s automated flight control system. The flight control system also provides underspeed protection to guard against stalls, and has the ability to perform coupled go-arounds, which does away with the need to manually activate missed approaches and automatically provides navigation guidance once the airplane passes the missed approach point.

Synthetic vision is standard with the G5000, and in this installation so is Garmin’s GWX 70 weather radar, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Out (ADS-B Out) compliance, and terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) technology, including TAWS-B (to help prevent controlled flight into terrain). TAWS-A, which warns of excessive closure rates and glideslope deviations, is optional, as is Garmin’s Connext service, which permits access to worldwide weather and voice and text communications.

The G5000 provides a 150-pound weight savings over the standard panel equipment package, Garmin says, and does away with the parts availability issues that dog legacy panels. Moreover, the G5000 comes with a three-year warranty.

Garmin holds the STC for this ambitious panel makeover, and its dealer network will handle installations. According to Phil Stearns, corporate sales director for Stevens Aviation, the G5000 upgrade should be priced in the neighborhood of $408,000, and require 15 days’ worth of downtime for the installation. Stearns said he already had three orders, and sees a total market of around one-third of the Beech 400A/XPR fleet, or “about 200 aircraft over the next two years.”