Digital Flight
Digital flight is what next-generation aviation is all about. Computer-driven, all-digital gear has taken the computer price/performance curve right into the smallest GA cockpit. Aviation is now online.
Digital flight is literally on display in the new cockpit. Behind those screens is a whole range of digital tools. And no end of acronyms. ADAHRS, EADI, TCAS, TAWS, WAAS, ADS-B and other technologies help automate the cockpit for far greater safety and higher efficiency. The Wrights would never believe it.
Analog to Digital: The Avionics Transition
With analog gear, pilots are trained to observe their less-than-perfect behavior. Peculiar instrument behavior is something the pilot expects from time to time and knows to monitor. If an instrument starts to fail, it often gives some warning. They may fail gracefully.
The transition from analog to digital avionics forces pilots to read standard flight information from new displays. And the underlying measurement technology is all new. How the systems work is fundamentally different.
Digital instruments behave differently. System failure is not a very graceful degradation. It either works or it doesn't. We see a big red X when it fails. Or the screen just goes dark. We've even seen a "blue screen of death" in a Citation cockpit, the same picture many of us have seen on our home computers. Now that's scary.
Analog to Digital: The Pilot Transition
Throughout aviation history, every new system that replaced familiar gear increased cockpit complexity. That continues today. Until each system is mastered the pilot is exposed to new risks.
To the pilot, digital instruments, particularly those with digital displays, present an authoritative face. Trained as we are by TV and computer screens, we take what screens display to us at face value. We believe what these displays show us. And we take that belief into the cockpit when a somewhat higher – even analog – level of skepticism might be appropriate.
The Fascination Factor
Do you know anyone who spends a lot of time surfing the Web? How about someone so fascinated with their computer that they spend a great deal of time and money constantly tuning its performance?
These folks become more focused on the tool than the goal. That's fine when you are sitting safely in your chair at home. Such fascination with new systems is best experienced in non-critical situations. You don't do a major software upgrade when you have report that must be done. The same is true in the cockpit. The many screens and buttons on digital avionics are intriguing. But until there is real familiarity, their capabilities are harder to use. Four point five MSL is no place to experiment.
Managing Systems, Flying the Airplane
Digital Flight offers amazing capabilities. Mastering that capability demands an up-front price be paid. New tools increase pilot workload – an enemy of safety. While these technologies promise to make flight easier and safer, that promise can't be kept until the pilot masters the new gear.
Whether a Cirrus or Citation, we're about training on the mental airplane. And the mental airplane is about information and automation management.
