Airbus has taken the opportunity with the A380 to implement the first major update of the electronic flightdeck concept it introduced with the A320 in 1988.
A380 senior vice-president engineering Robert Lafontan says the improvements were "driven by flight safety enhancements, lessons learned from airlines, and technology evolution - for example, communications navigation surveillance/air traffic management".
One factor that drove the conception of the flightdeck was the fact that "pilots who will fly the A380 are either teenagers or not even born", says Airbus chief test pilot Jacques Rossay. The overall cockpit layout is common with the A320 and A340 families, and retains all the proven fly-by-wire (FBW) elements - side-stick controllers, flight envelope protection and non-back-driven thrust levers.
The main visual differences that will strike an existing FBW Airbus pilot about the A380 flightdeck are the eight (two more than before) larger, interactive display units (DU), a pedestal-mounted alphabetic QWERTY keypad incorporating a cursor control device (CCD) for each pilot, new radio management panels and two new DUs that are the interface with the new on-board information system (OIS).
The deeper DUs enable more information to be displayed than with earlier screens, for example vertical situation profiles are shown at the bottom of the navigation display (ND), and control surface positions on the bottom of the primary flight display.
Two screens making their debut on the A380 are installed at the front of the pedestal replacing the traditional multipurpose control and display units that are used to interface with the flight management system (FMS). These screens display FMS/ATC-datalink information and are controlled by the adjacent keypad/CCD unit, which also enables new levels of interactivity for flight plan amendments on the ND.
The ND range selector provides a doubling of the previous maximum display setting from 320nm (590km) to 640nm, and a new "zoom" function brings up an airport taxiway chart down to a range of 0.2nm to help pilots navigate around airports on the ground.
Lafontan says each new function was defined by Airbus and then presented to airline pilots in mock-up form. After initial tests using PC-based demonstrators, the function was verified on the pre-production simulator dubbed "Aircraft Minus 1", where human factors tests were carried out by pilots from Airbus and customer airlines. The production-representative simulators - "Aircraft Zero" - are being used to test the functions and further trials will be undertaken during flight testing.
Boeing and its wholly owned subsidiary Jeppesen have led the way in developing paperless flightdecks, with their Class 3 electronic flightbag that entered service on KLM's 777-200ERs last year. Not to be outdone, Airbus's own version - the OIS - will be introduced on the A380. As well as eliminating most of the paperwork on the flightdeck, Rossay says the OIS will provide additional services - such as performance planning, operating manuals, navigation charts - to pilots and cabin crew, and will connect the aircraft to the airline network.
Each pilot has a 305mm-wide OIS display near the forward panel, which is controlled by a QWERTY PC-format keyboard incorporated in the foldaway table. The OIS will be able to interface with the ground and is fully integrated into the flightdeck operation using hyperlinks.
The question asked by most pilots who are not expecting to convert to the A380 is: "When will all these improvements be introduced on the existing families?" The answer, says Rossay, is: "The A380 flightdeck is designed to be implemented into the existing models, but no timetable is decided."
Source: Flight International
