Piper Single Turboprop Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Flight Instructor; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 7800; Flight Crew Type 5000
Human-Machine Interface; Training / Qualification
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Other / Unknown
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert; Aircraft Automation Overrode Flight Crew; Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem
Human Factors; Aircraft
During a routine training mission to familiarize a student pilot with the safety features of their high performance turbo prop aircraft; the aircraft automatically activated and notified various ATC facilities and the emergency guard freq of a aircraft presumed emergency. The aircraft broadcast a mayday distress call and changed our VFW squawk code from 1200 to 7700 without our input or knowledge. This aircraft has a new 'home safe' feature that is designed to be a one push button a pilot or more importantly a incapacitated pilots passenger can activate designed to bring the airplane back to earth safely without any additional human input. In a particular emergency training profile; the system activated before we had time to cancel its engagement. ATC and other surrounding aircraft became aware of the broadcast and were coordinating action plans until we had the ability to broadcast on 121.5 and eventually with ZZZ Center that the aircraft generated emergency broadcast was a false alarm and we were initiating a reset of all systems including cancelling the emergency squawk of 7700 and returning to 1200. We were in a class E airspace in a training zone and at no time were other aircraft in the vicinity of our location which could have caused a hazard. Only by monitoring the 'Guard' frequency did we know that the aircraft had initiated its own emergency distress call. Once we realized that the aircraft had broadcast a distress call; we initiated corrective action of cancelling all automation which stopped the aircraft from operating in its 'home safe' process and returned control to the pilot.
Flight instructor reported that on-board 'Homesafe' system automatically activated the emergency radio and transponder broadcasts.