The New Northern Avionics IES
In-Flight Entertainment System

Northern Avionics Milan is proud to introduce the new Northern Avionics.
In-flight Entertainment system (IES) for helicopters and airplanes.

Available for Order NOW

  IES Software Update
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STARTUP AND SAFETY BRIEFING

The IES has been developed for fast startup through software optimization and by using Solid State Drives. The System is operative in less than one minute from shut down state.
After startup the IES shows a presentation which includes a customizable safety briefing and a brief description of the user interface through the remote control.
The presentation loops until the system receives input from the remote, signaling that a passenger is on board and has viewed the document.

3D FLIGHT VIEW

After Startup, the IES switches to 3D Flight View application. This application communicates with the onboard GPS and displays data such as present position, flight plan, destination, speed, ETA and other information.

The 3D Flight View includes a number of view points, or cameras, which automatically loop on the screen. Both the number of cameras and the parameters such as distance, tilt, heading and display time can be customized by the user.

When flying over land, passengers might wonder about the elevation of the mountains which can be seen through the window of the aircraft. The terrain profiler has been included to provide this information by displaying an overlaid plot at the bottom of the map showing the cross section of the terrain as seen from the present position. The terrain profiler is included by default for cameras which are set to follow the aircraft route and can be customized by the user as well.

For flights over sea, the terrain profiler automatically switches from elevation to oceanographic data and displays a depth plot of the sea, also relative to the present position. This could make flights over sea more interesting and entertaining.

Manual Modes

The IES is also equipped with fully manual modes which can be activated from the menu and cycled through by pressing the play button of the remote. The PAN mode moves the map while the other modes allow to rotate, tilt and zoom to any location on the globe.
As the IES comes with detailed NASA maps covering the world, this could significantly enhance your flight experience and your way you see in-flight entertainment.

FLIGHT CAMERA

The IES also includes an optional high definition flight camera which is installed on the aircraft. Passengers can record the flight to disk in MPEG2 compatible format and play it back later.

Once recording has started it is possible to switch to any other IES application without interrupting the session. Should the user forget to stop the recording, this is automatically ended once the free disk space falls below a given threshold.

MULTIMEDIA

Music

All media can be played from CD, DVD or flash cards without having to transfer it to the IES system. This means that no media will reside on the IES after Flash cards or optical disks have been removed, which is important both for privacy and copyright reasons.

Once a Flash card is inserted, music, movies and images are automatically linked to the library and the "Music" application will open. The popular software "iTunes" is used for reasons of compatibility. This means that if a passenger is accustomed to using iTunes or has an iPod or iPhone, he will find it convenient to export part of the music library to flash card and to easily access it onboard. When switching to other IES applications such as 3D Flight View or Flight Camera, the music keeps playing and can still be controlled: the media can be paused or played again, it is possible to skip forward and backward and to adjust the volume settings.

Movies and Images

For movies and images, the system uses another popular Apple application called Front Row. The Front Row application on the IES supports several music and video formats such as mp3, AAC, QuickTime, MPEG-4, DivX, H.263, H.264 and many others.

Front Row can also play music and allows access to the music library, although playback will automatically be stopped when leaving the application.

Finally, in this application you can also see a slideshow of your favorite pictures, which have been imported from your flash card or CD/DVD.

SOFTWARE UPDATE

The IES was built to make software update easy and convenient for the customer. Updates come in form of a flash card that is inserted into the system by the customer. Going to the Settings application and activating the "Update IES software" menu starts the self-installation. Upon completion the system restarts with the new software.

Additional Features

The IES is an open platform, which means that features can be added in the future on customer request. One of the possible extensions of the IES is to work in combination with a satellite internet modem, with which the IES can broadcast the present position of the aircraft to a ground station, possibly together with all available information on the ARINC429 data bus. This can be important for fleet management purposes and for remote monitoring of the aircraft parameters.

For more information please contact Northern Avionics at number
+39 02 70209972 or via email at northern@northern-avionics.com.

Should you wish to see a physical demo of the IES system you are welcome to pass by our offices at Milan Linate airport, Italy.