Advanced user interface design for aircraft cockpit devices

A Flight Management System (FMS) is a complex computer system that is used for flight planning in all modern commercial aircrafts. The FMS' human-computer interface needs substantial improvement to make the best use of the increasing number of features. This article outlines some ideas for a new user interface to replace today's Control and Display Units (CDUs). The alphanumerical flight plan editing is replaced by a graphical user interface. A software prototype of such a CDU has been created, using Statecharts for the definition of this interface. The developed prototype was evaluated analytically as well as in experiments. Overall the pilots envisaged after the experiments that they could use such a system in the future.