BA609 Flight Deck Design and Workload

The Bell-Agusta 609 (BA609) is currently being designed and developed to meet market demands for a vertical-flight aircraft that can operate in the National Airspace System as a commercially certified aircraft. The certification basis for this airvehicle was derived jointly between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Bell. The complexities of operating a tiltrotor when compared to operating a conventional airplane or helicopter could drive the flight crew workload to an unacceptable level. With this in mind, the Bell-Agusta partners have taken the design challenge to not only reduce the workload to an acceptable level but to make the BA609 a unique aircraft that is very simple to learn and operate for a pilot whom holds either a Commercial Fixed Wing or Rotorcraft license. This paper presents the flight deck of the BA609, the designs implemented to provide for a "No Memory" cockpit, and the crew alerting system to support this development.