Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot

In response to Civil Case 3:07-cv-24 at District Court, District of North Dakota on 27 February 2007, Boeing issued a statement to reporters documented on the 3rd March 2007 admitting to the existence of the Boeing Uninterruptible Autopilot. The Boeing patent is US7142971B2, 19 Feb 2003 System and method for automatically controlling a path of travel of a vehicle.

As early as 2005, Boeing’s preferred avionics supplier, Honeywell, was reported to be talking to both Boeing and Airbus about fitting a device aimed at preventing a 9/11-style hijack. On the 16 April 2003, Honeywell filed patent US7475851B2 Method and apparatus for preventing an unauthorized flight of an aircraft. Airbus and BAE Systems, had been working on the project with Honeywell. Development sped up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

What is referred to as the "Unauthorized Flight Detector" in the patents lies within the software of the Line-replaceable units making up the Honeywell AIMS system at the heart of the Boeing aircraft manufactured after 1995, and it is programmed with the software routines that monitor for the emergency circumstances on which to initiate the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot.

1980–1999

Boeing and Honeywell along with Lockheed Martin developed the RQ-3 DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle. The UAV's flight path could be modified en route from a remote location by up-linking new waypoints to the Darkstar's Flight management system.

1984

Honeywell developed a digitally integrated flight management system that would automatically fly an aircraft along the best route according to an integrated flight database and flight cost routines.

1992

To maintain its technological advantage, the Department of Defense co-funded R&D development of technology for dual military / civilian use. Manufacturers could on-sell this technology to recoup its development costs.

1993

The purpose of the Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) unveiled by the Clinton Administration was to promote integration of the commercial and military industrial bases, through dual-use technology investments. The emphasis was on cost-sharing between the government and private sectors. This cost-share ensures industries commitment to the project and lays the foundation for industry to assume the total cost of production development, and in some cases, reuse that technology in the commercial sphere.

Development history of the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot

1995–2000 (AIMS-1)

Honeywell and Boeing relocated all major flight control and navigational functions into an integrated flight management system. The new brains of the Boeing aircraft was the Airplane Information Management System (AIMS) and the Integrated Air-data Inertial Reference System (ADIRS), which are both supplied by Honeywell.

2000 onwards (AIMS-2)

At the heart of the 2000 upgrade was Honeywell’s Airplane Information Management System (AIMS) whereby the third redundant flight control computer was relocated into the AIMS with its own inaccessible secondary power supply. This resulted in the AIMS flying the aircraft with flight control only augmented by the pilot, in other words, pilot input was no longer necessary.

2001

The US government lifted restrictions on GPS error insertions into the GPS and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) signals meaning that aircraft could navigate using the DGPS signal. This facilitated the automated landing of aircraft controlled by the Boeing-Honeywell AIMS programming introduced a year earlier.

The software for the Boeing-Honeywell 1995 AIMS and 2000 AIMS-2 upgrade was programmed using the Ada-95 Programming Language at Boeing's insistence. Previous investments in Dual-use and TRP technology could therefore be reused.

In a hijack situation, as per the patents' texts and Pilot Authority flow diagrams, BHUAP can remove all power to the cabin and cockpit and the AIMS will still function normally, either through executing a programmed emergency flight plan, or by opening an RF data link to an external source (via the Mode S Transponder) to receive direct, remote Flight Management Computer instruction, or an unlinked back-up flight plan. The AIMS has direct control over the flight surfaces through the redundant Flight Control Computer directing the Actuator Control Electronics boxes (ACE), and together with the Navigation Computer and Autopilot, requires no pilot input to fly and land the aircraft at a location suitable for resolving a hijack situation.