Airplane cockpit manual#
Airplane cockpit series#

The reason is that, for the vast majority of the time, side-sticks are superb. And yet that is how their latest generations of aircraft are designed. ^ Ross, Nick (), 'Air France Flight 447: 'Damn it, we're going to crash' ', The Daily Telegraph (article), It seems surprising that Airbus has conceived a system preventing one pilot from easily assessing the actions of the colleague beside him.^ 'Is Flight 447's 'Fly-by-Wire' Aircraft Technology Safe?'.^ 'Conclusions' Final Report of AFRIQIYAH Airways Aircraft, Airbus A330-202, 5A-ONG Crash, Occurred at Tripoli (LIBYA)on Published February 2013.'ASN Aircraft accident Airbus A330-202 5A-ONG Tripoli International Airport (TIP)'. ^ Getline, Meryl (), 'Ask the captain', USA Today.

Archived from the original on 8 July 2012. Airbus / Innovation / Proven concepts / In design / Fly-by-wire. ^ 'Fly-by-wire - A CIVIL AVIATION FIRST'.^ Crane, Dale: Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition, page 463.

This reduces the risk of pilots entering dangerous states of flights outside the operational borders while maintaining the pilots' final authority and increasing their situation awareness. Such an 'active' side-stick can also be used to increase pilots' adherence to a safe flight envelope by applying a force feedback when the pilot makes a control input that would bring the aircraft closer to (or beyond) the borders of the safe flight envelope. In 2015 Ratier-Figeac as a subsidiary of UTC Aerospace Systems, and supplier of ‘passive’ side-sticks to Airbus since the 1980s became the supplier of ‘active’ side-sticks for the Irkut MC-21.

Airplane cockpit manual#

The 'active' side-stick also provides tactile feedback to the pilot during manual flight and many, such as the three largest avionics manufacturers, Honeywell, Rockwell Collins and Thales, believe it will become the standard for all new fly-by-wire aircraft. This addresses the earlier criticisms of the 'passive' side-stick. In this system, movements in one side-stick produce the same actions in the other side-stick and therefore provides valuable feedback to the other pilot.

Airplane cockpit series#

However a later, significant, development is the 'active' side-stick, which is in the new Gulfstream G500/G600 series business jet aircraft. The 'dual input' warning will not activate at very low levels if the EGPWS activates due to its lower priority compared to EGPWS. Examples of this occurring include the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 (an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris), the 2010 crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 an Airbus A330 from flying Johannesburg to Tripoli and the 2014 crash of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 (an Airbus A320 flying from Surabaya to Singapore). However, if both side-sticks are moved in different directions (regardless of which pilot has priority), then both inputs are cancelled out and an aural 'dual input' warning sounds. The plane's computer either aggregates multiple inputs or a pilot can press a 'priority button' to lock out inputs from the other side-stick. In typical Airbus side-stick implementations, the sticks are independent, the so-called 'passive' side-stick. In the centre stick design, like traditional airplane yokes, both the pilot's and co-pilot's controls are mechanically connected together so each pilot has a sense of the control inputs of the other. This arrangement contrasts with the more conventional design where the stick is located in the centre of the cockpit between the pilot's legs, called a ' centre stick'. It is also used in new helicopter models such as the Bell 525. The side-stick is used in many modern military fighter aircraft, such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, Mitsubishi F-2, Dassault Rafale, and F-22 Raptor, and also on civil aircraft, such as the Sukhoi Superjet 100, Airbus A320 and all subsequent Airbus aircraft, including the largest passenger jet in service, the Airbus A380. Only one hand is required to operate it two hand operation is neither possible nor necessary. The throttle controls are typically located to the left of a single pilot or centrally on a two-seat flightdeck. Typically this is found in aircraft that are equipped with fly-by-wire control systems. A side-stick or sidestick controller is an aircraft control stick that is located on the side console of the pilot, usually on the righthand side, or outboard on a two-seat flightdeck.