G1000 PFD from a 2007 Cessna 172SP
I’m not sure if any of you saw Robert Goyer’s recent post, Function not Form, or Pia Bergqvist’s piece, Glass Cockpits Provide No Safety Benefit, Study Says, on Flying Magazine’s website, but you need to read one or the other. Both pieces were born out of an AOPA Air Safety Institute study, The Accident Record of Technologically Advanced Airplanes, which was recently released. The study’s results, which surprised a lot of people (apparently), show that technologically advanced aircraft (TAA) do not improve flight safety compared to their Luddite brothers.
A Plane is Still a Plane
The only thing I find surprising about the study’s results is that people are surprised. Seriously. I’m not at all surprised that AOPA found “demonstrably higher rates of accidents during takeoffs, landings and go-arounds,” or that “differences between analog and glass panels were minimal.” To suggest that showing all the same data in a marginally different way would lead to safer flight is like saying “My PC is faster when connected to an Apple display.” The PC is the same regardless of what display is hooked to it and so, too, is the plane.
This plane may not look like it, but it has analog gauges.
More Information is not Always Better
The bit about higher accident rates in critical phases of flight isn’t surprising to me, because glass panels tend to lump a lot of data into big chunks compared to steam gauges. When you look at an analog ASI, you’re seeing airspeed, but when you look at the tape on a glass panel, you’re also seeing about 4 other things. This, with an ill-equipped pilot, amounts to little more than information overload. Yes, the prodigious amounts of information available in modern glass panels can give a pilot a level of situational awareness previously unheard of, but more information is not always better. If more information were always better, we’d be teaching kindergarteners calculus and chemistry.
There are Many Tools to do the Job
Now don’t get me wrong, I think glass panels are great. So much information can be displayed on the screens that you couldn’t hope to replicate everything in an analog panel–there just isn’t enough space. If you are proficient in systems management and able to fly the plane, glass panels can be a boon for situation awareness. What it boils down to is, I don’t really care what it in the panel as long as it serves the purpose I need it to. I wouldn’t set off in hard IFR with nothing more than a tachometer and fuel gauge, but I don’t need synthetic vision to be reasonably safe on a marginal day. Similarly, I’m perfectly happy and safe tooling around the patch on a CAVU day with nothing more than basic instruments and I can see how, properly skilled, a G1000 with Synthetic Vision could enable safe flying through even the worst clouds. Furthermore, certain advancements in avionics offer marked improvements over more archaic technologies, such as solid state gyros. That said, everything will fail sometime–be ready.
See, told you so.
I will say one thing about analog panels, they tend to work very similarly across aircraft. I did all my training in a 172SP NavIII with analog gauges and a good GPS/MFD combo. After getting my certificate, I got checked out in a DA20-C1 with analog gauges and a Garmin 530. Most of the checkout was spent learning the 530; I never had to hunt for a gauge. If, for example, I were to get checked out in a G1000 C172 and follow that with an Avidyne Cirrus, I suspect I would have to start over basically from the beginning. So, that’s definitely an area where analog gauges win out over glass.
As a matter of conclusion, I offer the following: what makes a safer pilot? A stick actuator who relies on computers shoved in every crevice of the plane, a high-tech autopilot, and airframe parachute; the kind of occupant that hits the green button to go and if something happens pulls the red handle. Or, a pilot with a firm grasp of basic airmanship? In my book, bear in mind I’ve only used an autopilot twice just because it was there, all the whiz-bang stuff is convenient. Some so much more than others. When the stuff is on final approach to the fan, however, I’m going back to basics.
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