That’s great news. I felt from the outset that this would be quick and easy fix and that some of the reactions were overdone.

For reasons I don’t fully understand more than a few pilots have been very vocal in their criticism of the Cirrus Vision Jet.

If Cirrus keeps taking care of business it seems the VJ will work out well for them.

I think inadvertently, you're making the 6-pack point.

The problem with the NXi upgrade is that Garmin *didn't* give owners of anything except a few models of King Air that have STC'd G1000's in them an upgrade path. That would be the ones that Garmin owns the STC for. ( I think it is like $350k to install a G1000 in an existing King Air - I could be wrong but I recall it being in that scale)

Those of us with factory glass panels, are pretty much stuck unless the type-certificate holder wants to certify it and provide an upgrade. No NXi for me. Heck, no firmware updates since 2014 for me. That's all up to Textron. Garmin certainly has produced newer firmware and fixed bugs and improved things in the various components of the G1000 in my plane. But unless Textron wants to certify it for release, I ain't gettin none of it.

In the piston world, we have Mooney (hanging on by their toes and owned by a Chinese corporation), Piper, Textron who own Cessna, Beechcraft and the former Columbia Aircraft /TTx folded into Cessna, Diamond, and the big player in the piston world, Cirrus.

None have upgrade paths to NXi for existing G1000/Gx000 factory glass.

You can only get the NXi on brand new piston aircraft.

Cirrus and Diamond have been pretty good about firmware updates for the G1000. Not sure about Piper, so I won't knock them. The legacy Cessna have been getting some updates. The Columbia and Beech lines, well, not so many happy folks there.

I don't know about a "disappearing airport" issue. But there is a problem of approaches not being available for various reasons, such as the published approach lacking a descent angle. This affects many panel mount Garmin GPS systems, not just the G1000 systems.

However, aftermarket units get firmware straight from Garmin, so they get a timely fix. The G1000 systems have to go through the airframe manufacturer and so far, crickets from Textron.

In the piston world, we have Mooney (hanging on by their toes and owned by a Chinese corporation), Piper, Textron who own Cessna, Beechcraft and the former Columbia Aircraft /TTx folded into Cessna, Diamond, and the big player in the piston world, Cirrus.

None have upgrade paths to NXi for existing G1000/Gx000 factory glass.

You can only get the NXi on brand new piston aircraft.

Cirrus and Diamond have been pretty good about firmware updates for the G1000. Not sure about Piper, so I won't knock them. The legacy Cessna have been getting some updates. The Columbia and Beech lines, well, not so many happy folks there.

I don't know about a "disappearing airport" issue. But there is a problem of approaches not being available for various reasons, such as the published approach lacking a descent angle. This affects many panel mount Garmin GPS systems, not just the G1000 systems.

However, aftermarket units get firmware straight from Garmin, so they get a timely fix. The G1000 systems have to go through the airframe manufacturer and so far, crickets from Textron.

The main OEM's that are still producing aircraft seem to be supporting the legacy aircraft to Nxi upgrades. The ones that aren't supporting that have with sufficient numbers in the legacy fleet, Garmin seems to be stepping in with an upgrade path STC. I would worry more about the OEM's ability to stay in business. Companies like Cirrus, Piper, Socata that have a long history and track record of taking care of their owner customers, I would not worry about upgrade paths for glass panels. Companies that do not seem to be as interested in selling planes in the future, have low copy numbers, I would be more concerned. Even a 2005 G1000 beats a 6-pack though

Anyway, as mentioned above, Piper is going the route of going with an Nxi STC. That brings the software and hardware into 2020. Otherwise they would have to keep adding bandaids to overtaxed processors, and timing out boxes of the various G1000 iterations in the fleet. This is the better solution. Not everyone is happy with that solution, but they wouldn't be happy with the results of an OEM trying to support multiple hardware and software solutions with all the later and greater options.

That's not what I'm seeing at all in the piston market. I'm seeing quite a reluctance to do so for piston aircraft. Turbine and jet is a different story. But there's quite a lot more money involved there.

I figure the per-unit cost at $50,000 to $60,000 to update to NXi, and that's if they're already at WAAS.

I have a non-WAAS G1000 (from 2007) and just the parts kit to upgrade it to WAAS is now over $41,000. Add 16 hours of labor to that and we're pushing $50K out the door, just to get to WAAS with exactly the same firmware levels.

According to AOPA, the FAA and Garmin are working on a solution for the approaches where Garmin will stop screening out the approaches without a published VDA. This means that in some future navdata update, we may see these return and no G1000 software update will be required.

It can't come soon enough as we are missing a primary and only available RNAV approach that is typically used in poor weather at our home airport.

Do you have a source for that information?

This would be the only confirmed program for NXi retrofit into any piston aircraft that I've found.

Does this also apply to the rest of their existing piston G1000 fleet, such as Seneca V, Seminole, Archer, etc?

Ryan,

Very interesting to learn about the major/minor aspect.

Thank you,

Tim