Garmin advances strategy on next-gen large airplane flight deck

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Garmin has quietly been developing the next iteration of its integrated flight deck for Part 25 transport category aircraft. The next-generation avionics for large business jets and transport aircraft will build off of the recently announced G3000 Prime system for turboprops, light jets and advanced air mobility aircraft, multiple people familiar with the company’s strategic planning told The Air Current.

The system, notionally called G5000 Prime, is a major evolution of the company’s G5000 flight deck that was announced in 2010 and debuted first on Cessna’s Citation Longitude. The introduction of the G5000 was a significant move for Garmin, representing a risky challenge to avionics providers Honeywell Aerospace, Thales and Collins Aerospace. The redevelopment of G5000 to align with the company’s new Prime system could be just as impactful, given the enthusiastic reception G3000 Prime has received in the Part 23 small airplane market, where it has already displaced incumbents.

On March 14, Pilatus Aircraft announced that G3000 Prime would be the centerpiece of its new PC-12 Pro — the first of the Swiss plane maker’s aircraft to roll off the factory floor with a full Garmin flight deck. Besides being a win for Garmin, the news also served as a warning to competitor Honeywell, whose answer to Prime, the Anthem flight deck, has yet to be certified. (Anthem is being flight tested on a PC-12.)

Related: G3000 Prime pushes Garmin (and pilots) beyond ‘direct, enter, enter’

But more than that, the evolution of this transport-category flight deck is the next step in Garmin’s broader strategy, which has structured G3000 Prime not only as a standalone product, but as a collection of technology building blocks that can be adapted to meet Part 25 standards in a notional G5000 Prime. As TAC detailed when G3000 Prime was launched in October 2024, the system’s modular architecture, app-based software and ability to run on as little as two and as many as six or more displays makes it relatively easy to adapt for larger aircraft applications.

“The [G]5000, the Part 25 work — this display set is intended to support that,” Jason Hewes, Garmin’s team lead for aviation human factors design engineering, told TAC in an interview last year. “You can imagine that will come along when we have a … Part 25 customer.”

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