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The Evolution of Aircraft Automation
Published in Charles E. Billings, Aviation Automation: The Search for A Human-Centered Approach, 2018
For those unfamiliar with glass cockpit terminology, Fig. 5.17 is a generic flight deck layout showing the panels that are discussed here. Up to 6 electronic display units, together with backup flight instruments (liquid crystal displays or electromechanical instruments) and a few critical systems indicators, are found on the main instrument panel. Aircraft systems controls are located on the overhead systems panel. A mode control panel (also called flight control unit) is located centrally on the glare shield below the windscreens. Other flight management system control units and communications controls are located on the pedestal between the pilots, together with power and configuration controls. These displays, together with paper documents, verbal communications, aural signals, and the pilots’ own knowledge, provide all real-time information to the pilots. The flexibility of glass cockpit displays has made it possible to provide any sort of information in new and different formats, and to modify that information in any way desired by designers to fit any need.
Pilot Interaction With Cockpit Automation: Operational Experiences With the Flight Management System
Published in Eduardo Salas, Aaron S Dietz, Situational Awareness, 2017
Nadine B Sarter, David D Woods
The current training programs for pilots in transition to glass cockpits can provide pilots with the basic knowledge required to make the FMS work, especially in standard situations. However, the data in the corpus show that this training may not be sufficient to prepare pilots for dealing with all operationally significant FMS procedures and information for coping with nonstandard situations. It may prove important to revise our conception of training experienced pilots for transition to glass cockpit aircraft, for which the initial training is one part of a longer, continuing learning process with respect to how cockpit automation functions and how it can be used as a resource in a wide range of operational circumstances. Training opportunities for pilots flying glass cockpit aircraft in line operations may need to be expanded to establish ongoing progressive training (a) through additional information about FMS features that are used less frequently or that cannot be tried out in line operations for safety reasons, (b) through opportunities to test and to extend their skills in managing the automation, especially in more difficult or unusual flight contexts, and (c) through opportunities to follow up on and learn from surprises that they or their fellow pilots have experienced.
Ab Initio Flight Training: A Systematic Literature Review
Published in The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology, 2023
Elvira Marques, Guido Carim, Chris Campbell, Gui Lohmann
Integrated electronic displays, also known as glass cockpits, replace analog dials in traditional aircraft cockpits. Learning to operate a glass cockpit can be complex if the student has experienced only analog instruments and vice versa. While students tend to prefer glass cockpits, ab initio students who train in a glass cockpit perform worse than those who use the traditional cockpit with analog instruments. The design of glass cockpit displays can pose challenges to students with no previous flight experience and negatively affect their performance. More specifically, students tend to focus on the glass cockpit numerical readout, which leads to distractions and issues in maintaining the correct airspeed, heading, and altitude (McCracken, 2011; Wright & O’Hare, 2015). This is corroborated by Dubois et al. (2015), who concluded that “novice pilots fail to avoid the too much head-down time glass cockpit pitfall” (p. 10).
Future technology on the flight deck: assessing the use of touchscreens in vibration environments
Published in Ergonomics, 2019
Louise V. Coutts, Katherine L. Plant, Mark Smith, Luke Bolton, Katie J. Parnell, James Arnold, Neville A. Stanton
Over the past couple of decades the increasing complexity of the flight deck has resulted in a move away from the traditional overcrowded array of hundreds of mechanical switches, indicators, toggles and gauges into what is now termed the ‘glass cockpit’ and features sensors, computational systems and a structured array of LCD electronic flight instrument displays. There is an ever growing number of functions available for implementation on the flight deck, such as the recent advances in aircraft sensing and data collection and processing. The currently crowded arrays of flight instruments leave no further potential for incorporating these newly available functions, leading to increasing need to move the ‘glass cockpit’ onto the next stage. One solution to this problem is to replace the current set up with a suite of touchscreens that can be customised to provide an unlimited array of airframe specific user applications.