Business Jet with active sidestick

Active Sidesticks Shine in Gulfstream G500 Sim Flight

The G500/G600 are Gulfstream’s second-generation jets with fly-by-wire flight (FBW) controls, designed to fill a gap between the traditional G450/G550 and the fly-by-wire G650. The major difference between the G650 and the new models is found in Gulfstream’s Symmetry flight deck, where touchscreen controls replace a swath of switches, knobs and buttons and the pilots have an unobstructed view of the four 13- by 10-inch Honeywell displays because the large control yoke is gone, replaced by sidestick controls. Sidesticks are not new in business aviation; the non-FBW Eclipse 500 was the first so equipped, followed by the FBW Dassault Falcon 7X and Embraer Legacy 500. But the way Gulfstream has implemented sidesticks is new for civil aviation, because the “active control sidesticks” are electronically interconnected and move in concert. To try out the new sidesticks, AIN senior editor Matt Thurber went to Gulfstream’s headquarters in Savannah, Ga., to fly the G500 Conceptual Advanced Simulation Environment (Case III) simulator. He is one of the few non-Gulfstream pilots to fly the sim and the first journalist to do so. Read his account here.