Boeing speed tape has the higher speeds on the upper side of the PFD (737NG) and I presume it will be all the same for the other boeing products.
As I have no experience at all with Airbus products I cannot comment on that. However I think most of the comments regarding the presentations in the glass cockpit apply to both of them.
My opinion is that position awareness on these aircraft is extremely high. If the pilots pay a little bit of attention its almost impossible to fly into the ground (EGPWS, map display, LNAV etc). The manufactures have put a lot of effort into avoiding CFIT incidents. Still about 25% of all aviation accidents are due to loss of control ! And If I look at the improvements made on that aspect in the cockpit its very very poor. The instruments look nice in the glass cockpit but they are basicly the same as 50 years ago. Fly by wire made some protection possible to keep the aircraft within the "envelope" but where in the envelope the aircraft is and where its going performance wise is very difficult to predict. Particulary as the cockpit windows are very small, wind and engine noise have almost disappeared and (not for boeing aircraft) control forces are gone.
I fully agree with Nightbird that the chosen locations of instruments is not the best. And many times your eyes are swerving through the cockpit to look for some indication, be it flap position, engine power or outside reference etc...
There have to be some scientific research been done in the past to come to the present situation. If anybody can point me to some I'd be greatfull. Just to see what arguments they came up with.
Finaly I'd like to tell about a occurence that happened a few months ago during an ils approach which demonstrates some of the problems Nightbird is worried about.
Cat 1 Ils approach with cloudbase around minima. Autopilot and autothrottle engaged. In the GPWS minimums call I called the runway. Captain disengaged AP but instead of disengaging AT he pushed GA buttons. F/D into go around mode and thrust increase. Upon recognising his mistake disengaged a/t. Now the speedbug was set for GA and thrust not stabilised for approach. This caused lots of confusing both by him and me. All the "reference values" were gone. FAS was somewehere between displayed speedbug and displayed Vref on speed tape. It was just impossible to tell with an eye glance wether speed was high or low. Thrust was pulled back so far in the reaction of the forward movement of the thrust levers that it was way beyond wat one would call stabilized setting for final approach. When I called for power the captain said something about speed being too high, which in fact was already approaching Vref and by the look of the trend vector was not increasing. Although he adjusted a fare amount of power it was nowhere enough and the only option left was making the Go around after all. After a further uneventfull landing we discussed the event. He told me he was fully confinced about the speed being too high as referenced the speed against the speed bug. He also admitted although he thought power was set he never really looked at the actual N1. When I told him the speed bug was still about 15 knots above our calculated FAS and this was caused by the GA mode of the FD and our actual speed just before the actual go-around was already Vref he admitted he was completely confused about it.
This just to refer to the last comment Nightbird made about any human misreading the speedtape......
