The Advantages of a Primary Flight Display

With the advent of CRT displays in the cockpits of civil transport aircraft, the opportunity is now here to provide pilots with more meaningful information than could be done with the old electro-mechanical instruments. If this is done in an intelligent and well-researched manner, a significant advance in safety and operating efficiency can be gained. There is no advantage in simply reproducing the conventional attitude indicator and flight director on the CRT screen.

The object of this presentation is to describe the innovative features of one type of primary flight display (PFD) with which the author has experience and to discuss the advantages it provides over conventional instrumentation from the viewpoint of a line pilot and flight instructor. This PFD is one component of the electronic flight instrument system'(EFIS) which is standard on the current series of Airbus models.