My pilot-based thoughts. Some have been mentioned by others too.
It needs sun visors. That looks like a lot of window area, heavily raked so difficult to get the sun & heat out of your face. Not just darkened visors either. Proper opaque things that can be positioned pretty much anywhere. It's bloody annoying flying into a facefull of low sun and the only available screens can only dim the glare a little. Or can't be positioned to cover the particular spot that the sun is in. In all the aircraft I've flown, what I would have loved are blinds on each window that can be pulled down. If they can go all the way to the bottom of the windows and have the exterior facing surface reflective then they can double as sunscreens while parked.
Why overhead throttles? Sure, we all get used to throttle or trim knobs mounted above but I find it less comfortable than a lower, pedestal mounted set.
Numerous cockpit lights, individually controlled, both ambient & spot. Make sure at least one narrow beam spot per pilot seat can shine right where approach charts & paperwork will be held or worked on. That light needs to have a narrow field to reduce glare. A light on a curly cord is nice too - there's always spots that one would like to look at that's not directly exposed to light. One of the few things I really liked about the Islander. I could even shine it out the window to look for icing. Oh, and forget incandescent bulbs. Use LEDs.
A spot to stick approach plates/charts while in use so they can be seen without obstructing the displays or interfering with operating switches & buttons. It must allow for bound documents, not just single sheets. Not everyone uses Jepps. and their annoying 'take the page out, put the page back in every single time you wish to use a chart' system. OK if two crew and the PNF can do the task but a right pain single pilot.
Lots & lots & lots of storage space/bins/drawers for manuals, charts, paperwork and the like, jacket, pilot's flight bag (pilot's bag reachable from the seat), pen holders, place to put a cup that can capture spills. How much empty space is there in the central pedestal? Same question for those side pods.
Make CB panels grouped & mapped to represent the system(s).
Make sure seats can move far enough rearwards so that feet can't reach the pedals. Good for when a pax. is in the other seat or you're the PNF or even just want to stretch for bit.
Don't agree with replacing rudder/anti-torque pedals with twistable grips. The input is still needed so why move the inceptor? You make one part of the body have to work harder or with more complexity while leaving the previously used body part doing nothing.
Don't do what Garmin did with the terrain alert on their GNS430/530 kit. The bloody alert occludes the entire map requiring an input to remove even though the advisory box also has a warning too. It's a right pain in the bum. You can disable the terrain alert, but only after each avionic power on then it defaults back to enabled after each shutdown. Unfortunately that disables all terrain warning, including the less obtrusive one in the advisory area. It's not that I don't want the alert, I just don't want that big bloody alert blocking the screen I want to look at.
Use knobs where possible, not a keypad. Keypads are a pain while bouncing around through turbulence. At least a knob can be gripped for support while using it. Make sure it has decent detents & resistance to movement or overshooting the desired selection happens. Don't use push-push selection for either-or functions. Use push-pull so the force applied acts as feedback. Also it means you can apply force contrary to the undesired choice to make sure it doesn't happen. I flew an aircraft once with an altitude warning selector that was push-push to choose 100' or 10' increments while rotating the knob to select value. Bloody hated it! I was always bumping it during use and having to go back to undo the selection in the unwanted scale. It was the one that crystalized my dislike of too-soft detents too.
Definitely a hard switch to select altimetry scale. Also while on about hard vs soft switches: A hard switch for any function that gets used a lot eg heading bug, nav. course and the like. Transponder codes too, in a way. having to drill through menus to bring up a transponder setting page isn't on. OK I think to have TXDR select hard button (or semi-permanent soft button) then use a multi function input knob or pad
Auto-altitude arm. Once I enter the next alt. in the panel, I shouldn't then have to arm the thing. Starting the climb or descent should then activate the mode. A Kingair 200 I fly is annoying that way. If the arm button isn't selected then it will happily bust an altitude even though the altitude has been set in the alerting system.
Fuel gauges that aren't in the pax. field of view. Or at least, aren't obvious. Makes pax nervous to see the guage getting low - especially if there's still another couple of hours left to fly. They don't know how much fuel is in other tanks but they've just seen the rate the gauges moved towards empty. Piper's PA31, for example, has two large fuel gauges mounted in the center overhead panel and looking straight back at the pax compartment. There are four fuel tanks but the indicating system only shows the tank selected. Pax aren't happy when you're trying to use all of the aux. fuel because it *looks* like the plane is low on fuel, never mind the other 3 hours left in the main tanks. When I fly that type I have to dick around on the last 1/4 of each aux with one engine selected back to main so at least one guage shows plenty of fuel while the other engine uses the last of its aux., then select that one to main so the 1st engine can use its remaining aux.
Shouldn't have to be said but all switches reachable from the captain's seat. That B200 I mentioned earlier has a hot amenities bar but it's impossible to switch on or off from the captain's seat. OK if flown with a co-pilot but not when single pilot. I suppose I could switch it on as a climb into my seat, pull the CB prior to start, and then reset the CB after start - but I shouldn't have to.
Make sure avionics databases can be upgraded using standard SD or USB memory devices. USB preferably due to ubiquity. I should be able to bring the memory device from my PC to the plane, plug it in and have the databases updated. None of this serial port + laptop dragged to the cockpit to download the update. Also the ability to upload flight plans generated on a PC and download monitoring information such flight & engine data for later analysis. Monitoring data must be in an open format, not some closed binary requiring special software to access eg CSV plain text instead of M$ .XLS or similar. Just about anything can open or import a plain text file.
Any hot battery buss courtesy lights should also have master switch near the exit so that they can all be switched off just prior to shutting the door after parking. Some the aircraft I fly have hot buss courtesy & cockpit light switches scattered through out the aircraft. The number of times I've had to go back through the plane to make sure *every* hot light is off so the battery doesn't discharge... Also any automatic courtesy light needs to have a selectable auto/off/on switch eg in baggage compartments. Sometimes I need or want to leave the door open without the light on, other times I don't want the light on at all.
XM weather (or equivalent)! I consider it to be the biggest advance in weather safety since onboard Wx radar. US centric, I know but that's where I am now & satellite weather is truly wonderful. The number of times I've either been able to do a flight where previously I'd have cancelled or delayed, or been able to save hundreds of track miles by having the big picture + immediately available TAFS & METARS.
Probably heaps of other things I've forgotten but have sat there wishing it was so, or not so.
PS: An aux. audio IN jack please, with automatic muting. I have this nice little MP3 player that works really well in the aircraft I fly...
Last edited by Tinstaafl; 20th Feb 2011 at 06:08.