Flight Deck Interface

Flight Deck Interface Adrian Gonzales

Aviation Safety

February 18, 2015

Flight Deck Interface

Flight Deck Human-Machine Interface

Human-Machine interface is the place where mankind, technology, and machine all come together in the field of aviation. Their are many advantages of an aircraft with modern-age technology over aircraft from generations past. However, they also come with their own set of challenges. As technology and equipment advance at a rapid rate, the challenge to ensure that training and comprehension of these advances stays on par, this however, is becoming more of a challenge and safety concerns are arising.

In World War I, bombers would almost literately just toss a bomb out of the cockpit and hope for the best. In World War II, computers would take over the B-24's and the bombing run would commence and afterwards if the plane was not shot down during the run it would turn the controls back over to the pilot. With todays modern aircraft, pilots can hit a target with amazing accuracy using a vast array of bombs, missiles and rockets. This would be impossible without the use of computers and many other inputs from avionic equipment. This being a very specific example of how in order to accomplish a certain task (hitting a target with a bomb) both man and machine must be able to interact with each other to get the job done.

In the world of every day aviation a huge transition is taking place from man piloted aircrafts to machine piloted aircrafts. In this transitional period the roll of the pilot and the roll of the machine are becoming blurred. Computers are able to take thousands or readings every second and compute that data in to information for pilots. This gives pilots everything they need to know in order to make responsible and safe flight decisions. However, just like the issue with texting and driving in automobiles, becoming distracted by too much data can also become a distraction to pilots. Further more the...