Narrative:

Flat panel display; yeah; I passed my check ride in this ; so fine...then it occurred to me when we were rolling down the runway that this is not safe. Set the power; that looks good; okay airspeed 1532; no wait; that's the clock; where's the airspeed? Oh; there it is; 102; okay '102 KTS' now where's V1? Well I remember it's 134; and there we are 'V1' yeah; that's the ticket; let's see; I guess about 18 or 20 months ago I saw what the tape looks like; how about that! There's flap speeds and such on there in green! Okay; now tower says to call socal departure. 'Socal departure...'now where the hell is my altimeter? Oh there it is; ' out of uhhhhh...3250 for 5000'. Yeah; this is great; remember I passed my check ride in this so I must be ready to go; sure. So in plain; professional pilot language; jumping into a flat panel display aircraft after not seeing it for over a year; and then--having spent only a couple of hours in the simulator--taking a check ride in it; is unsafe. It's unsafe because it's distracting; it takes away situational awareness; it disrupts normal habit patterns and instrument scans; and in the event of an emergency; in my opinion; the disruption and lack of situational awareness caused by the unfamiliarity with this totally different avionics package could easily lead to an unnecessary and preventable accident. Maybe I'm not as smart as the rest of the guys; or at least not as smart as the geniuses that decided that it was a good idea to just install this system and give us a quick check ride in the simulator as a substitute for training and familiarization. We have compromised the margin of safety in the interest of saving money.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An air carrier captain expressed his concerns about inadequate training on flat panel nav and situation displays gradually replacing the original; more conventional; quasi round dial configuration. A secondary concern was the excessive time between that marginal training and the actual exposure to the new equipment in line operations.

Narrative: Flat panel display; yeah; I passed my check ride in this ; so fine...then it occurred to me when we were rolling down the runway that this is not safe. Set the power; that looks good; okay airspeed 1532; no wait; that's the clock; where's the airspeed? Oh; there it is; 102; okay '102 KTS' now where's V1? Well I remember it's 134; and there we are 'V1' yeah; that's the ticket; let's see; I guess about 18 or 20 months ago I saw what the tape looks like; how about that! There's flap speeds and such on there in green! Okay; now Tower says to call SOCAL departure. 'SOCAL departure...'now where the hell is my altimeter? Oh there it is; ' out of Uhhhhh...3250 for 5000'. Yeah; this is great; remember I passed my check ride in this so I must be ready to go; sure. So in plain; professional pilot language; jumping into a flat panel display aircraft after not seeing it for over a year; and then--having spent only a couple of hours in the simulator--taking a check ride in it; is unsafe. It's unsafe because it's distracting; it takes away situational awareness; it disrupts normal habit patterns and instrument scans; and in the event of an emergency; in my opinion; the disruption and lack of situational awareness caused by the unfamiliarity with this totally different avionics package could easily lead to an unnecessary and preventable accident. Maybe I'm not as smart as the rest of the guys; or at least not as smart as the geniuses that decided that it was a good idea to just install this system and give us a quick check ride in the simulator as a substitute for training and familiarization. We have compromised the margin of safety in the interest of saving money.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.