TimS wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 2:29 pm
Keith M wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 2:27 pm
Are my fears exaggerated, or could we end up with a generation of certified aircraft, not just from Diamond, eventually being grounded if Garmin stop manufacturing parts for the G1000? Any newer technology would have to be certified in these older airframes, which depends on the largess of the aircraft manufacturers to do something which is not necessarily in their financial interest.
Short answer is yes.
Tim
The "longer answer" is this is unlikely to be an issue anytime soon.
Even after Garmin stops manufacturing avionics, they continue to repair existing units for decades. As a good example, Garmin will still repair GNS430 and 530 navigators, despite these being introduced in 1998. (There are more than 20,000 of these units installed in various aircraft including DA20s and steam gauge DA40s.) Eventually Garmin will run out of parts, since electronic chip and screen technology changes over time, but their track record of supporting old avionics has been pretty good.
For the G1000, "obsolete" LRUs like GIA63s will continue to be repaired by Garmin. They can ship replacement LRUs overnight if you ship your failed unit back to them (so Garmin can maintain an inventory of repaired units).
As long as an aircraft model remains in production it should be possible to replace groups of legacy G1000 components with their corresponding G1000 NXi components that can run the latest software. For example, this year Diamond Canada is restarting production of Lycoming DA40s, and these will ship with G1000 NXi. This means there will almost certainly be a way for legacy G1000 Lycoming DA40 owners to retrofit their aircraft to NXi, albeit at a high cost that may be prohibitive for many owners.