Flying along the other night in a A346 (although this is irrelevant) I glanced across to the EPR gauges which read something like 1.050. I realized that the actual value didn't mean much to me. The relative position of the needle on the gauge means something but not the actual number. What am I missing here? This made me wonder if there might not be a better way of indicating actual thrust vs idle and max available thrust. Say for example, a thrust percentage gauge which compensates for alt/temp ect
Why do you care?
Isn't airspeed more critical in cruise?