“TRANSITION TO A GLASS-COCKPIT AIRCRAFT”

By Mike Gaffney

It was one of the most exciting product launch events that I had ever attended.  I was at the Cessna C*Star Dealer Kickoff meeting in October 2003.  Everyone was bristling with excitement as the aircraft that sat in quiet waiting behind the giant curtain was kept in top secrecy waiting for the right moment to be revealed.  As the buzz started to fill the air, speculations started to circulate about what could have been so secretive.  Could it be a new aircraft design?  Could it be a diesel engine?  Was it some new composite design that Cessna was preparing to introduce?  After a brilliant production of high energy music, laser lights, and a crescendo of hype from the announcer, the curtain finally rose to show… A Cessna Skylane that looked just looked just like it had for years before?  But wait, something was different.  The instrument panel was made of glass.  In fact it was two screens that looked like laptop screens had replaced the instruments that we had all grown up to know and love.  Many in the room knew that the traditional manufacturers must do something inside the cockpit to keep up with Cirrus who had just started rolling out their Avidyne glass cockpit.

Even though I have been working with computers almost as long as I have been flying, I still was genuinely surprised when the idea finally hit home.  A computer enhanced display screen replacing the mechanical instruments and a giant version of the multifunction display that was purported to be as easy to use as a Garmin 430.  I rushed up to the aircraft as soon as they started the lines.  I jumped right in the left seat under the watchful eye of the Cessna and Garmin technician and started the process of learning the “switchology” and brilliant laptop like display panels of the new boxes.  I was instantly impressed and found that my knowledge of computer integration and my working knowledge of the Garmin 430/530 came immediately into use.  I then looked up at the line of veteran pilots and aircraft dealer representatives who had now formed at both cabin doors for their turn to peer into the new electronic wonder.  The skeptical looks on some of their faces made me wonder if it is possible to teach seasoned dogs new tricks.

As an educator, my mind began to race.  How were we going to help existing pilots make the transition to this new paradigm?  VFR or IFR, was not the issue.  The issue was situational awareness.  How could we get people from staring at the displays and pay attention to what was going on outside the aircraft?  How could we adapt our FAA certified Part 141 Private and Instrument curriculums to work in this type of panel configuration? Many more questions and thoughts came to me that day as the long line of seasoned industry veterans took their turn peering into the Skylane that evening in the fall of 2003.  The final numbers told the real story.  The dealers ordered the Garmin 1000 glass panel at a rate of almost 2 to 1 that night over the conventional panel.  The dealers knew that the sleek, colorful Garmin panel would sell all by itself.  They were right.  Since that day, Diamond, Cessna, Mooney, and Beech have all converted their venerable single engine aircraft over to glass offerings and there arte rumblings about discontinuing even offering the conventional panel by as soon as 2006.

Selling these aircraft appeared to be the easy part because the gadgets sold themselves.  What some of the players in that frenzied room that day did not realize is what a chore it would be to reformulate the process of training pilots to fly these aircraft.  Out the door was the concept of a “Let’s hop in and take her around the patch” type of checkout.  We had seen enough evidence when we were teaching the GNS430 and the KLN94 equipped panels.  The pilots who tried to do it by the seat of their pants started punching buttons trying to get to the screen where they wanted to go when they should have already been there.  They were fiddling with settings on the units while they were taxiing, and they were spending way too much time with their head inside the cockpit when they should have been looking outside.  They wanted to just push the “Direct To” button to fly the units like they learned the fly their first LORAN units.

We decided that this was not the way to have people manage these aircraft and the cockpits that controlled them.  By this time, we had three of these aircraft on the way to our flight school in St. Louis and we knew that we only had a limited amount of time to prepare ourselves or it was going to be our insurance companies who were going to be telling us how to do it. 

No, it was time for change in the training process.  This was not the usual training process nor was it the same old learning process for the Pilot in Training (PT).  That was when we started to work with the FITS team in Washington to look at how the FITS (FAA/Industry Training Standard) process would apply to the reconstruction of our Part 141 approved programs that would use these aircraft. 

After many preliminary meetings and day-long introduction courses while we were waiting for the various factories and the FAA to agree on certification issues, my first real introduction to the Garmin 1000 Glass Panel was at the Diamond Aircraft factory training program.  A 12 hour ground school followed by a 3 flight sequence with a factory trained instructor at the Diamond Training Center in the new DA40 DiamondStar.  I then attended a similar program at Cessna when we picked up our first Skylane.  I later returned to Cessna to complete a Factory Authorized Flight Instructor (CFAI) certification.  This was a clever way on Cessna’s part to designate Flight Instructors who understood the panel and the FITS approach to teaching in these aircraft and to separate them from the many other flight instructors who might try to teach the old way without ensuring a thorough student engagement with the electronics prior to cutting them loose on their own to discover it by trail and error.

Back in St. Louis at Skyline Aeronautics, we have already racked up hundreds of hours on our three G1000 equipped aircraft available for training and rental.  We have two more Garmin 1000 equipped Skyhawk SPs on the way for the spring training rush.  We have developed a very thorough training program that has become not only the first FAA Approved Part 141 TAA course, but has also become the first Part 141 also approved by the FITS Program Office review team.  Some of the things that we have learned and are now passing onto our nearly 50 students who have already passed through this program, is nothing short of astounding. 

We have made some very significant findings during the design and rollout of this Technically Advanced Aircraft (TAA) training program.  First of all, customers are willing to attend a mandatory ground school in order to gain a true understanding of the panel and its workings, partly because we told them they had to, but they were willing to invest their time and money to accomplish this.  Through this program, pilots have become fascinated with the electrical system of aircraft and have truly gained some insight into the flow of power through the veins of these aircraft because we finally have monitoring equipment capable of telling us exactly what we need to know in order to watch for abnormal indications from our electrical buses.  Who would have thought that pilots would care?  They don’t need to be mechanics to understand these systems.  They just need to know that the readings are as important as watching the ground go by on the multifunction display. 

Another thing that we have determined is that pilots really do not understand the autopilot.  These aircraft were designed to be managed and the autopilot is part of that management process.  The autopilot is an essential part of the system and to ignore it is just not prudent, either from an instructional standpoint or from a pilot’s standpoint.  As part of our training program, we have incorporated a robust area of the syllabus dedicated to understanding the autopilot.

Another key area is developing a scan flow.  What we mean here is the orderly process in which the pilot diverts their attention around the airplane and out the window.  In more classically designed aircraft, the scan was divided in three areas:  Outside the aircraft, the primary flight instruments, and chores.  The simpler and slower the aircraft, the more time the pilot had to look out the window and naturally look for other aircraft.  What we now find is that in TAA aircraft, the “Scan Flow” is 4 steps:  Outside the aircraft, Primary Flight Display, Multi Function Display, and Chores.  This was not so bad when the MFD was a simple GPS, but now with a system like the Avidyne or the Garmin 1000, the pilot is presented with a colorful distraction loaded full of information that is demanding more and more of their time.   Instead of the pilot dividing the Scan Flow into 4 equal parts per minute flown, we are finding that pilots are spending more and more of their time staring at the MFD like a kid staring at cartoons on a Saturday morning.  Instead of spending equal amounts of time across the Scan Flow, they are spending 3 times as much time on the MFD than they are looking outside the window!  This is worrisome and must be corrected during transition training.  Just because the screen provides traffic advisories (TIS) Terrain advisories (TAS), Stormscope advisories, a realistic picture of Class B, C, and D airspace dimensions, and Nexrad weather including cloud tops and cell movement does not relieve the pilots responsibility for looking out the window!

The last key area we want to ensure pilots understand is the concept of electronic situational awareness regarding the use of the Flight Planning features of the system.  The system truly understands an electronic flight plan and in fact does an excellent job in working with the autopilot in flying that itinerary all the way through the approach.  In the early generation of LORAN and GPS units, pilots learned the incredible power of the “Direct To” key.  It was sort of magical but pilots learned it so well that now they don’t want to give it up.  In the days of more sophisticated and integrated panels like the Avidyne and Garmin 1000, a new process must be followed in order to reduce the cockpit workload of the pilot.  The Flight Planning key (FPL) is the new magical button.  The pilot must be taught that flight planning on these systems begins with the engine off.  Yes, that is right!  It is no longer acceptable or safe to sit there with the engine running trying to figure out the buttons to make the flight.  Sit there with the MFD running and program the flight and then save it to the Flight Plan database before starting the engine.  Flight instructors must ensure that a pilot is not reaching for switches and setting radios while taxing the aircraft.  All avionics input should be done while the aircraft is stopped so that the pilot can concentrate on following the taxiway centerline and avoid a runway incursion incident.

This all begs the question, have aircraft gotten too complex and should pilots really want to transition into these glass paneled aircraft?  It depends upon what you want to do with the aircraft and what kind of pilot you are.  If you are happy cruising around class G airspace because the regulation book changes too much for you to keep up with it, then probably not.  If your goal is to use the airspace system to quickly and dependably get from point A to Point B, maximizing the information you have available so that you can make educated decisions about the flight and arrive in safety, then the answer is an astounding yes! 

In the pilots lounge, you can here discussions reporting that “Once you go glass, you will never go back” (or maybe they were talking about something else…).  What Pilots are saying is that these aircraft are a joy to fly and provide a situational awareness close to what only corporate pilots and astronauts have been enjoying up until now.  The next several years will undoubtedly bring more exciting changes to the aircraft cockpit.  Real time taxiway moving map, entertainment channels being beamed down from satellites to entertain our passengers while we get real time weather, and clearances and other terminal information being relayed to our cockpits via Mode S links are a reality that we will see fulfilled within the next 3 years.  What our aircraft will look like beyond that is only a twinkle in the eyes of the software designers who are controlling General Aviation’s destiny.  Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!