Soon, everything will be connected on the internet. It has become clear that business pilots, flight attendants, and maintenance and operations personnel will increasingly rely on their aircraft's avionics and communications capabilities—usually via satcom—for many other applications.

For an aircraft to be listed in the Purchase Planning Handbook, a production conforming article must have flown by May 1 of this year. The dimensions, weights and performance characteristics of each model listed are representative of the current production aircraft being built or for which a type certificate application has been filed. The basic operating weights we publish should be representative of actual production turboprop and turbofan aircraft because we ask manufacturers to supply us with the average weights of the last 10 commercial aircraft that have been delivered.

In a flat market for new aircraft, the best place for avionics makers is to focus their resources on the aftermarket, and indeed that’s what we’re seeing — witness the panel upgrade competition between Sandel, Garmin, Universal, Avidyne and others. Prices for some avionics, such as transponders and thunderstorm detectors, have tumbled or risen only marginally, while cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) and flight data recorders (FDRs) are up dramatically.