Garmin® transforms the industry with growing portfolio of autopilot aircraft approvals

Last month Garmin announced it continues to roll out autopilot aircraft approvals at an increasing rate for the GFC™ 500 and GFC 600 autopilots. Several popular aircraft such as the Bonanza B36TC, Cessna T210, Cessna 421C and Piper PA-46 are among the latest additions to a growing list of aircraft approvals, allowing these aircraft owners to experience the superior benefits of a modern Garmin autopilot.

In just three years, Garmin has completed 42 Supplemental Type Certifications (STC) on over 30 popular aircraft, spanning nearly 200 aircraft models between both autopilots, with more aircraft approvals in progress and many more to follow. Each aircraft undergoes a comprehensive flight test programme at a Garmin flight operations facility, which includes flight testing at a variety of aircraft weight and center of gravity (CG) limits, as well as a full range of altitude and airspeed tests. In addition to standard autopilot functions, features such as underspeed and overspeed protection, Electronic Stability and Protection (ESP™), vertical navigation and take-off and go-around modes are also thoroughly evaluated for each individual aircraft. These complex and rigorous certification processes demonstrate Garmin’s commitment to bring highly capable, state-of-the-art autopilots to our customers.

New aircraft models approved for the GFC 500 autopilot include:

Beechcraft Bonanza Models: B36TC, N35, P35

Cessna T210 Models: 210G, 210H, 210J, T210G, T210H, T210J

New aircraft models approved for the GFC 600 autopilot include:

Cessna 421 Models: 421C

Piper PA-46 Models: 310P, 350P

The full-featured GFC 500 and GFC 600 autopilots provide thousands of existing general aviation aircraft with a simple, lightweight, cost-effective autopilot upgrade path. The GFC 500 and GFC 600 incorporate a solid-state attitude source with robust self-monitoring capabilities to provide superior autopilot performance, greater reliability and safety benefits that are similar to Garmin’s popular GFC 700 autopilot used in our integrated flight decks.

In addition to traditional autopilot capabilities such as altitude hold, vertical speed and heading modes, the GFC 500 and GFC 600 also include altitude preselect, VNAV1, Level Mode, underspeed and overspeed protection and more. Pilots can also select, couple to and fly various instrument approaches, including GPS, ILS, VOR, LOC and back course approaches when paired with a compatible GPS navigator.

As a standard feature on both the GFC 500 and GFC 600 autopilots, pilots receive Garmin ESP, which works to assist the pilot in maintaining the aircraft in a stable flight condition. ESP functions independently of the autopilot and works in the background to help pilots avoid inadvertent flight attitudes or bank angles and provides airspeed protection while the pilot is hand-flying the aircraft.

The GFC 500 autopilot uniquely integrates with the G5 or GI 275 electronic flight instruments for attitude reference. The G500 TXi & G600 TXi flight displays can also be paired with the GFC 500 and the G5 or GI 275 flight instruments, allowing flight director and autopilot modes to be seamlessly integrated on a larger format display. Additionally, the GFC 500 and G5 can be used in cooperation with the G3X™ Touch and the G500/G600 flight displays.