Thales FMS200 achieves FACE Conformance certification

The Thales Flight Management System, FMS200, has been awarded a FACE® (Future Airborne Capability Environment) Conformant certificate, augmenting current certifications for both civil and military applications. The capability of seamless integration and rapid evolution of the avionics software is an asset for enhanced warfighting capabilities, competitive costs and rapid deployment of new features.  

FMS200: pioneering open architecture

On April 18, 2025, the FACE® Consortium certified the Thales FMS200 Flight Management System as conformant to its 3.1 standard for portable components. Thales's FMS is the first in the industry to achieve public conformance to the 3.x series of technical standards, enabling faster evolution and easier integration. The certification by the Open Group further endorses its compatibility with open standards and Modular Open System Architecture Approach (MOSA) objectives, facilitating interoperability and portability.

The FMS200 product line inherits from Thales’s FMS 40-year expertise and continuous development to meet the ever-evolving aerospace requirements. With millions of operational flight hours on numerous aircraft, the FMS200 series is designed to be flexible and agile, offering precise trajectories and what-you-see-is-what-you-fly capabilities through both civilian and military airspaces. The FMS200 reduces pilots' cognitive workload, allowing them to focus on their external environment to conduct the mission safely and efficiently with precision and agility.

"This milestone is a huge step forward to getting the FMS200 into the hands of operators quickly and seamlessly,” said Ryan Walters, General Manager of Thales's Flight Avionics USA activities. “Our Thales FMS200 has always been a game-changing solution, aligning early on with the concepts, developments, and expectations for modularity, while allowing connectivity for a myriad of external applications. The FACE certification allows us to demonstrate our expertise, perfectly aligned with the principles of modular open system architectures.” 

Multiple instances of the FMS200 have obtained EASA and FAA FAR25 and FAR29 certifications, as well as military qualifications for single or dual-pilot IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) on a wide range of civilian and military helicopters and fixed-wing platforms. This product line is crucial for all-weather IFR navigation during all phases of flight. Compliant with AC20-138D and TSO C115d requirements, FMS200 instances meet ICAO performance-based navigation standards, enabling fully compliant operations such as RNP (Required Navigation Performance) Enroute, RNAV (Area Navigation), RNP approaches down to LPV (Localiser Performance with Vertical Guidance) minima, and RNP approaches requiring authorization.

Additionally, the FMS200 series features an open architecture that supports connectivity for external applications while maintaining a very low hardware footprint. Successful integrations have been achieved with most A653 operating system providers, across various central processing units (CPUs) including PowerPC®, ARM®, and TigerLake®. These characteristics make it an ideal solution not only for integration into future avionics suites but also for retrofitting enduring fleets yielding best value procurement, life cycle affordability, and accelerated development and fielding.

• Find out more about the Thales FMS200
• Find out more about the FACE® (Future Airborne Capability Environment) certification: www.opengroup.org/face