... at least according to Dassault. I saw an ad in Business Week for their new business jet and they bragged about their state of the art flight deck and how it dispenses with the current FMC. It goes to a completely point-and-click/drag and drop interface like Windows with retractable full size keyboards and trackball at both pilot stations.And that made me realize... how stupid is it for airplanes built these days (or especially designed since 1995) to have these archaic FMCs? If you think about it, FMC programming before a flight is like using DOS when Windows exists.Look at how stupid the FMC is in the 717 or A340-500. Both of these are totally new airplanes, yet they still use the counter-intuitive, DOS-like, cryptic FMCs. One color text. Stupid key arrangement. Complex abbreviations.Imagine being able to select menus and drag and drop your navigational data right on the flight deck using a standard keyboard and trackball. Sweet.

The biggest thing keeping people back is the fact that bugs can happen much more easily in a Windows environment than a DOS one.

Better yet....speech recognition of key-words!Of course though, as has already been noted, the more complex the interface, the more likelihood of problems....imagine a 'Blue Screen of Death' when the aircraft is on finals; would a back-up system even be able to over-ride the crashed system? A reboot would be out of the question!!Computers are great.....till something goes wrong, and it doesn't take a lot to upset a Windows based PC, but regaining control afterwards can be a difficult task, depending on the problem....But, all the same, I like your idea, and to follow on with speech recognition would be cool....Jeez, before long, the only qualification for being an airline pilot would be based upon competancy within a Windows environment, and could the person fly a couple of IFR flights in whichever version of Flight Sim is relavent.....heh, heh!! There's hope for us all yet!!

Hi,why do you compare FMC or MCDU with DOS and Windows???I would rather pull Linux out of the bag and compare SuSe 9.0 with Mac OS 9.0....But basicly your point is valid! But are you a pilot? Can you edit a flightplan of a FMC with real buttons and a be-color screen when you are in bad weather and in turbolences? Can you do the same with a one-for-all touch-screen at the center TFT EICAS screen as well???I am not a real pilot. So, these are just questions and maybe I am wrong and there is even the better way to have a TFT touchscreen MCDU with color graphic drag and drop interface with a better OS than today and more like Dassault seems to provide now.If I would have a FMC software for my Palm m505 and a GPS unite I could couple with my palm AND any AP of a GA, I could setup the flightplan with that palm. But it is too tiny in size to use in bad weather and turbolence... It should be about twice its size for aeronautics use.

HaHa!! You know what's funny? Everyone who's trying to build a homecockpit (like myself) so as not to use a keyboard, when real airplanes are bringing keyboards into the cockpit!!Just thought that was a little humorous.

The day is coming when the pilots wont tell the computers where to fly, the computers will tell the pilots and they'll have precious little say in the matter.An intuitive map-based flightplanning system that could then be simply taken to the cockpit where it would be repeated onscreen would seem a logical progression of the current system of flightplanning on one system and then exporting the results in a format the aircrafts own computers can understand. That's daft!The next generation of flight data displays can already display the `Highway in the Sky` dream of many designers, where the pilot merely follows the steering cues provided by outside agencies. It's only a small step to think that the Highway would best be planned in a pictorial format that would enable a pilot to plan, see and fly more like we do with FSNavigator, for example.Allcott

Checkout this link....http://www.falconjet.com/aircraft/7x/avionics.jspClick on "Explore Easy Flight Deck"

Uh oh...http://www.pbase.com/image/23585870.jpg

:-lol

LOL ROFL DOLF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!That would never happen with a linux driven OS in a planes computer-system!But nobody programmes a Flightsimulator like 2004 for Linux or makes the existing one useable at linux. Thats a pitty!Dassault makes it just about right! I am amazed!!!