Combat Aircraft Flight Deck

Figure 15.16 shows a typical modern flight deck for military aircraft. Backup ana­log gauges are provided as well as the MFD-type EFIS. The left-hand side is the throttle and the right-hand side is the side-stick controller known as the hands-on throttle and stick (HOTAS) (see Section 15.8.6). The figure indicates which type of data and control a pilot requires. A single pilot’s workload is exceptionally high when computer assistance is required.

data-entry control unit

oxygen

Flight data EFIS at the left and navigational data EFIS at the right

Figure 15.16. Schematic fighter-aircraft flight deck

15.8.1 Civil Aircraft Flight Deck

An old-type panel with analog dial gauges is shown in Figure 15.17. With two pilots, some of the displays are duplicated, which are deliberate redundancies.

The latest Airbus 380 flight-deck panel replaces myriad gauges by EFISs, which are MFD units. The minimum generic layout of a modern flight-deck panel is shown in Figure 15.18. Numerous redundancies are built into the display with inde­pendent circuits. PFDs, NDs, and SDs have several pages that display significant data.