Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

Re:Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls by dheera on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:39PM (#22740126)

That sounds like a horrible idea.

If you're trying to say, lower the landing gear, and the button malfunctions, you can probably smack the button a few times until it works, failing that, rip the switch out and short the wires inside the switch and get the plane landed.

With a touch screen? What if the glass breaks and the capacitive layer fails? Or the software running the screen crashes? Or a bug prevents you from switching from the "Climate control" tab to the "Landing gear" tab?

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Re:Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls by intlcaptain on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:52PM (#22740305)

There are three redundant methods to lower the landing gear on my aircraft, depending on whether you still have hydraulic ability available or not. It is not unique. One is a big, fat lever that will not go away with a hypothetical touchscreen option, since we pilots tend to like physical backups for flight-critical systems like that (though I’m curious what pc86 is flying upthread, since even the G1000 aircraft I’ve flown have usually had airspeed dials).

It is even totally possible to gravity drop landing gear on nearly all commercial airliners, I would expect, though I can only speak on the types I’ve rated on. I don’t see you asking “what happens if the landing gear lever fails?” which is actually a totally reasonable question, and one manufacturers have thought of. Touchscreens aren’t magic devices, they’re just another type of input to build redundancy behind.

It sounds like a horrible idea because you probably haven’t flown an aircraft and don’t know this. That isn’t an indictment of you, just a request to not judge so soon. I like the idea of screens that adjust to phase of flight so what I need is where I need it, because pilot workload is a real problem that automation has addressed for decades.

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Re:Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls by dheera on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @02:25PM (#22740722)

> One is a big, fat lever that will not go away with a hypothetical touchscreen option

Thanks for the explanation -- This makes me feel much safer as a passenger if the touch screen is provided to you as a convenience instead of a replacement. Yep, I haven't flown an aircraft. I was thinking that it was like a car where they are getting rid of physical knobs and replacing them with touchscreen-only interfaces which I hate.

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Re:Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls by cesarb on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:53PM (#22740309)

> If you're trying to say, lower the landing gear, and the button malfunctions

If you're trying to lower the landing gear, and the button malfunctions, you use the gravity gear extension handle, which is a completely independent system. You can also land without the landing gear in the worst case.

> What if the glass breaks and the capacitive layer fails? Or the software running the screen crashes? [...]

You use the other screen, which is controlled by the other computer. There are also knobs to switch which computer controls each screen. In the worst case, there are the standby instruments.

Airplanes have a lot of redundancy.

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