A ‘node’ in the clouds 40 Frontiers June 2014 Real-time connectivity is taking jetliner flight decks into the future By Kathrine Beck When Suzanna Darcy- Hennemann began her Boeing career nearly four decades ago, the flight decks of commercial jetliners were filled with a vast array of dials and gauges. “I started on the 737-200, an airplane that was totally mechanical with a small computer,” recalled Darcy-Hennemann, Boeing’s first female test pilot and now chief pilot and director of Training and Flight Services at Commercial Airplanes. Those flight-deck analog systems were eventually replaced by the “glass cockpit.” Digital data were displayed on cathode-ray screens similar to those used in old cubeshaped television sets. Later, in the 1990s, those screens began to be replaced by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which today provide pilots with all kinds of digital and graphical information, from weather and flight path to how their plane is performing. But applications to display new and valuable information to flight-deck PHOTO: Pilot Mark Carriker, at the flight simulator controls, gives input on 777X flight-deck development to engineers Alison Lauderbach (from left), Jim Blohowiak and Jeffrey Goedhard. MARIAN LOCKHART/BOEING
Frontiers June 2014 Issue
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