Garmin GNS 430
Garmin has sent a letter to its aviation customers, reminding them that its hugely popular GNS 430 was introduced in 1998, which was 25 years ago. And 25 years is a long time when it comes to technology. While many of us have household appliances that old or even older that still function, can you imagine using a personal computer built 25 years ago? Of course not. But in aviation, where we fly 70-year-old airplanes as if they were just rolled out of the factory hangar a few years ago, it’s not easy for many of us to accept that some of our technology has practical life limits. But it does, and Garmin’s letter was its gentle way of reminding us all that nothing good lasts forever.
I still remember the day back in 1998—how did that happen!—when the late great Garmin sales guy Tim Casey invited me to a small cubicle at a big trade show to show me his company’s latest product, a panel-mounted box with a big, bright display that he told me was called the Garmin 430. I was completely blown away. This revolutionary device in a standard width package seemed to be able to do it all. It was a world-class GPS navigator, a visually appealing flip-flop comm radio, an FMS and more. I knew right away that I was witnessing the future of aircraft electronics.
And I was right. Over the past quarter of a century, the electronics maker based in Olathe, Kansas, which has risen to become the leader in electronics for small to not-so-small aircraft, has become ubiquitous in light-plane avionics panels. Although the GNS 430 wasn’t their first panel-mount product, it surely accelerated the company’s path to success and, not long after, dominance, by being the one avionics product that every light plane owner just had to have in the panel. Since its launch in 1998, Garmin has sold nearly 150,000 GNS-430s. It’s difficult to say how many buyers installed more than one in their panels—a dual GNS-430 setup was a popular option—but that still means that a large percentage of light planes have flown with a 430.
Another revolutionary aspect of this product was its price. While around $10,000 might not seem cheap to today’s buyers, who are used to getting a lot of functionality for not a lot of money, at the time there was nothing that could come close to matching the value proposition of the GNS 430, and remarkably, that was true for well over a decade, perhaps even longer. In a single box, the GNS 430 gave pilots capabilities that they couldn’t find anywhere else at any price and at a cost that allowed widespread adoption at a level not seen since King’s Silver Crown avionics components dominated the light-aviation skies in the 1970s. And the Garmin box could do the work of an armful of previous-technology products, and more, and all for the price of a fraction of that armful of old tech.
It’s tempting to think that the letter from Garmin is just a corporate ploy to sell new products to old customers, but that’s not the case at all. When a washing machine part wears out or breaks, it’s not hard to find a replacement part, even for machines that predate cable television. Long after the manufacturer stops making those machines, you can still find the parts. Part of the reason is that those parts are often used in subsequent products, and part of it is because third-party companies make clone parts that you can just install and go about your daily washing. But computer parts are very different. Remember that the avionics revolution that began in the 1980s was the result of smart and agile companies leveraging existing computer parts and technology to create products for our light planes. This eventually led to products like the GNS 430, among many dozens of others from Garmin, Aspen, Avidyne and more. That meant using off-the-shelf products in aviation applications—after going through many of the FAA’s hoops—or contracting with those computer parts makers to build parts for your aviation product.
Here’s where it gets tricky and where our dreams of evergreen products come to an end. When a company like Garmin contracts with a parts maker to build digital components for a product line, it doesn’t contract for that partner company to make those parts forever. It agrees to buy a certain number of those components that it predicts will last the life of the product line. For the Garmin GNS 430, one such component is the display. Garmin had to make its best guess on how many GNS 430s it would build, for how long, and how many of the screens it would need to replace during that product’s lifespan. If back in 1998 you guessed that the GNS 430 would be produced for 20 years and sell 150,000 units, well, you would have been right, and those were indeed Garmin’s guesses, which is quite amazing that they would have taken such a huge gamble with the investment in a product that they had no way of knowing for sure would be a big hit.
Now, 25 years down the line for the GNS 430, Garmin is indeed running low on certain parts—our best guess is that the display is the main concern—and that means they might not be able to repair broken 430s for much longer.
In an unusual set of circumstances, with the introduction by Garmin a few years ago of the GTN series of touchscreen multifunction navigators, used GNS 430s became hot commodities on the used market, selling in many cases for more than their original retail prices even as thousands of owners swapped out their 430s for the new-generation Garmin navigators. Will those used 430s purchased to save a few thousand dollars prove to be a bad investment? Maybe. But that’s the risk of such gambles.
The replacement pathway for those owners and for others who have had 430s in their panels for a couple of decades is a GNX product. The GTN 650 Xi is the same form factor as the 430, and it has a wealth of improved capabilities. Its larger panel mate, the GTN 750 Xi, is a whole different story. For starters, it’s huge, so big that it can act as a pseudo flat-panel multifunction display, and these new products integrate with a host of others that were only a glimmer in Garmin planners’ eyes when the 430 was being developed.
These products aren’t cheap, costing roughly a third more than a 430 would if it were still being made today. But these new boxes offer so much more functionality. And for those owners who are less brand-conscious, quality products from Aspen and Avidyne, among others, offer compelling options.
The bottom line is this: Avionics are not as long-lived as airframes in terms of product life, but for now at least, that’s okay, since the replacement pathways for products that are approaching obsolescence are numerous, relatively affordable and attractive in terms of both capability and ease of use.
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