First off I’m not trying to troll the forums, I honestly want to understand this:
I mostly fly GA aircraft and mostly ones with Garmin avionics in them, and I can’t not notice from other people’s screenshots how airliner avionics seem to be from a previous age.
For example here’s the cirrus vision jet’s cockpit
Compared to the 320NEO cockpit:
I do not think that airbus would be a fool, so there must be some reason why the instruments in their newest line of aircraft seem like a bigger version of their standby instruments. Why?
I guess synthetic vision is either hit or miss for people, but why no huge display for a map, or for various charts?
The 737MAX looks like it may be able to handle these sort of things, but that was the only airliner cockpit that seemed to be capable
Is it simpler for existing pilots get their rating if the new aircraft have the same older style instruments? Do these instruments somehow make more sense? Are they saving money?
Look at eg. the 787, A350 or A220, eg. modern airliners those have much bigger screens and more modern glass cockpits.
The 320 neo is based on the 320 which is a plane from the late 80s. They want to keep them very similar so the type rating carries over.
Another part I think is also that only professionals fly airliners, and with a co-pilot. GA planes are often flown by people that may not have very many hours and only a PPL. If you look at for example the checklists given in eg. a TBM and compare it with Airbus checklists, the TBM checklists are much more comprehensive, they are more like full on FCOMS. I read somewhere that is because A320 pilots are full on professionals with defined flows, so checklists can be reduced to the absolute bare minimum.
Just some thoughts.
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The avionics under the hood of an airliner is pretty complex. The display in which we interact with only needs to be logical to the user. Most pilots with plenty of hours under their belt probably wouldn’t need any displays as they will have a mental picture in their minds as to their position in the world.
Some GA planes like the Vision jet you posted are designed around accessibility to the pilot and is perhaps one of their selling points. It’s very user friendly to fly. Of course the leg work is done for you via computation and software. So the plane is not simple by design but is made easier for the pilot.
I don’t think it’s ultimately about saving money although it is of course a factor. I think it’s about logical efficient systems presented in a way that is understandable to the pilot so that they can focus on flying.
An interesting example might be Boeing/Airbus. Different terminology and different to fly but both present a way to achieve the same objective which is to fly the plane.
Another example might be the F-35 which is a glass cockpit and a very sophisticated one at that.
I think that over the last 30 or so years technology is changing from analogue to digital and what you are observing is the integration of that tech into flight systems.
To me the difference in the systems is one of the attractions of aviation but that’s just me.
Thank you for your answers, it seems like I was just checking out the cockpits of wrong aircraft, those above seem way more like it.
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