Pilot Attitudes in Comparing U.S. Army Glass Cockpit and Traditional Crew Station Designs

The crew station instrument panel of U.S. Army rotary-wing cockpits has changed from one of traditional displays (e.g., gauges and dials) to one using multifunction displays (MFDs). The newer design is referred to as a “glass cockpit.” Pilots generally approve of the introduction of glass cockpit designs, and there is significant evidence that commercial aircraft with glass cockpit designs have fewer accidents. However, a recent study of U.S. Army rotary-wing aircraft comparing accident rates between traditional and glass cockpit models of the same aircraft type found evidence for higher accident rates in the glass cockpit models. Since the design of future aircraft will almost certainly include glass cockpits, it is important to explain this finding. To identify characteristics of glass cockpit designs that might be contributing to the accident rate differences, pilots of both traditional and glass cockpit models of the OH-58 Kiowa and AH-64 Apache helicopters were surveyed regarding their attitudes toward traditional and glass cockpit designs in the areas of workload, safety, crew coordination, situational awareness, and training. The survey results suggest that the pilots of glass cockpit aircraft generally have more positive attitudes toward their cockpit than the pilots of traditional cockpit displays. Significantly, though, pilot ratings of some aspects of workload and training were more favorable for the traditional cockpit design than for the glass cockpit design, so further investigation on those areas offers the best chance of explaining the accident rate differences.