Open Flight Deck is a consortium-led project involving industrial and academic partners, with the aim of creating the world’s most advanced flight deck.

Aircraft are in service for decades, but there is a huge barrier to adopting new flight deck technology due to the high cost of change and certification. This project aims to future proof the flight deck by creating an open architecture platform to continuously deliver the latest advances in computing, networking, cloud-based services, AI and automation – enabling aircraft manufacturers to build and customise their own flight deck.

The Partnership

This project will capitalise on the strengths of the five partners to provide technologies that will be exploitable across all types of aircraft platforms.

The industrial partners in the team – GE Aviation, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce – have a long history of technological innovation and the exploitation of that technology with a range of successful products. Each has significant penetration in the aerospace market with products for both civil and military customers, in the United Kingdom and for international export. The academic partners – Coventry University and the University of Southampton – bring world-leading expertise in human factors engineering.

The project is co-funded by the UK Aerospace Research and Technology Programme; a partnership between Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), UK Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), and Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Open Flight Deck tools
GE logo
BAE Systems logo
Rolls-Royce Aerospace logo
Coventry University logo
University of Southampton logo
Open Flight Deck displays

The Project

Open Flight Deck is a consortium project led by GE Aviation involving BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Coventry University and University of Southampton. It is supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK.

Objectives

To develop an accessible platform for the flight deck.

To utilise the platform to evaluate novel flight deck solutions.

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