a pilot here chimes in...
I have over 10,000 hours experience flying jet aircraft. I was chief pilot/director of ops for a corporate flight department for the last 11 years of that 18 year career.
Introductions out of the way... this idea stinks, IF there isn't also a backup set of analog devices. I also don't see an advantage of one display over multiple displays.
On that latter point, the argument is made that multiple displays are somehow 'limiting' as to what can be displayed. I remember the advent of the "glass cockpit" and we were assuaged by the argument that multiple displays meant that if one failed, the data it had displayed could be moved to a different one. So maybe you'd forgo a map in order to put the attitude display on it, should the primary attitude display fail.
But the bottom line is you rarely go wrong with a device measuring differential air pressures, or that's a face connected by gimbals to a spinning gyro. An all-electronics system in a very electromagnetically harsh environment is a frightening prospect.
BTW I saw a comment about flying "by the seat of the pants," any pilot that does that in anything other than a crop duster needs to be fired. You simply can't trust your senses in IFC. (instrument flight conditions) That's the #1 cause of crashes: not using your instruments, especially when they conflict with your senses.
But the writer's point is correct, very basic information is all that's needed, in the realm of "absolute emergency." "Needle, ball, airspeed," a turn and slip indicator, and the airspeed indicator are all that's needed to fly the dang thing. Altimeter adds added p0itch information, plus obviously helps with terrain clearance.
I know the egg heads will talk of "massively redundant" computers, "emf hardening" etc... tell that to the pilot looking at a totally dark glass cockpit... he/she'll be cursing the engineers to hell while frantically looking for the analog turn and slip gyro and airspeed indicator that aren't there.
For a lesson as to what happens when the computer geeks are let loose on aircraft design, remember the Paris airshow Airbus crash a few years back... The pilot was doing a fly by in slow-flight (pre landing) conditions: gear down, lots of flaps, low speed. To recover all he had to do was throttle up, the overabundance of power the REAL engineers built into the thing would have lifted it up despite all the drag.
But the egg heads programmed the computer to "know better," the computer saw the other flight conditions and interpreted them "you are landing," so when the pilot pushed the throttles up, the computer said "you can't really want to do that, you're landing!" and didn't spool up the power. The plane drifted quietly downward and glided to a "landing" in the trees off the airport a mile or so.
Sure, they "fixed" that one, but my point is what other unforeseen conflicts lay in waiting in those computers?
Give me physical flight controls any day. I have never, nor will I ever fly on an "fly by wire" aircraft. Statistics mean nothing, unless you are one of them.
