Hi CL300,
I do not fully agree with you there. I fly the A340-600 so I consider it to be the latest generation airliner, correct?
FD guidance below 400ft: it exists ok but....on rotation we rotate to X deg pitch up regardless of the FD, because it simply can not cope with the dynamics of take off.
Cost index: how many airlines do you know that use variable CI the way it was intended to be used. Myself I know one. All the others flyconstant CI the whole time. On top of that most pilots will change the CI the whole time to gain those odd 5 minutes flight time...
Autoland: Great feature I have to admit. But from what I understand there is no need to certify most executive jets to do an autoland. Too many small airfields, visual approaches etc. I was flying a european national carrier before, doing european hops all winter. We maybe did 5 CATIII approaches per winter season/pilot on average. Now I am flying a big national carrier in the sandpit. This winter season my number of CATIII approaches stands at....0! So the cost of certifying an airplane to operate in CATIII conditions has to be considered as well...Maybe there just is no economical case for certifying exec airplanes for those kind of ops.
CPDLC: We have it on board these days...true...Its very nice to get a start up clearence in busy aiports or to use while crossing the atlantic. But thats about it....There just is not much use for it because the ATC centres are lagging behind. In europe only Eurocontrol uses it, Shannon atlantic is another one, Brasil ATC when crossing south atlantic, Mumbai FIR, Calcutta and Yangon on one airway....thats about it. And on all these FIR s VHF or HF is still operational as well. So why again, certify the airplanes for those things if the use of it is rather limited? I am sure that once it is widely implimented we will see them appearing on the bizz jets as well.
On the other hand bizz jets introduced long time ago the following:
Electronic nav bag and moving map charts
Trust bias/rudder bias if EFATO
HUD
Big screen EFIS and avionics
....
I tell you one thing, comparing the flight deck of the current generation A340-600 with e.g a GV or 7X is like comparing a 737-200adv to a 737-800.
Airliners are not by far as inovative and pilot friendly as the modern generation bizz jets. My experience off course...
