AIN 2011 Cockpit Avionics Report PDF
Take a look at the dramatic photograph splashed across this page. I bet you want to fly this airplane. Look at the color-drenched synthetic landscape projected onto the windshield, below the head-up display bracketed by a system synoptic and FMS page. As if that isn’t enough, a huge display on the instrument panel shows a high-resolution outside view from above the aircraft flying over photo-realistic terrain. The FMS page adds more detail, with a 3-D depiction of what appears to be your flight path and perhaps another airplane’s planned flight. There appears to be a cursor-control device for your right hand, but I would be surprised if this display not only is a touchscreen but also allows you to grab any element and move it anywhere you want in the cockpit, including onto the windshield, like the transparent displays featured in the Tom Cruise film Minority Report.
There’s just one thing wrong with this picture: only half of a current two-pilot crew will get to fly this display because this is clearly a cockpit built for one pilot. And it doesn’t take much imagination to picture the business jet that this cockpit is attached to. Maybe a light jet, maybe something heavier; eventually this type of cockpit will fill the streamlined aerodynamic nose of all kinds of aircraft.
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