We work all levels of experience, from prior airline experience to folks with nothing much more advanced than day VFR low altitude single engine piston time.

CRM is not a significant issue. What CRM means in an airline training context is getting used to Pilot Flying (PF) and Pilot Monitoring (PM) challenge and response procedures, avionics duties, and checklist roles and responsibilities. Most folks pick this up pretty easily.

Next, the issue of 'glass'. For your question, what you really mean to ask about is the EFIS display. The Electronic Flight Information System is the instrument display where all flight info is placed on one instrument for easier reference. An EFIS is what we typically see in many modern instrument displays.

The term 'glass' can be misleading...''glass' is a term used for the use of a electronically generated image (such as a cathode ray tube, CRT) to replicate a traditional 'mechanical' instrument. This image may look exactly like the traditional instrument...if so, using it is no different than in the past. So...depending on what we are talking about, 'glass' may or may not be synonymous with EFIS.

Not all EFIS look alike, but they have some common features. Typically, the 'attitude indicator' will be in the middle with altitude info on the right and airspeed info on the left. The EFIS 'look' often changes with what flight mode is selected...for example, an ILS approach display might include localizer and glide slope indicators whereas the standard display does not.

The 'attitude indicator' usually includes a flight director that may or may not be displayed depending on mode of flight. A flight director may be of two designs...a single cue or a dual cue. The single cue is by far the most popular as it is considered to be the most intuitive...and the most common type is the aircraft triangle and wedge shaped command bars design. A typical dual cue design is one that uses separate vertical and horizontal guidance...and is often referred to as 'crossbars'.

The single most important piece of guidance that I can pass along is that an applicant have a strong background in a basic instrument crosscheck with emphasis on the precision instrument approach. The basis for this crosscheck regardless of type of display needs to be a solid foundation in raw data. You can never go wrong with a raw data crosscheck...flight directors are not error free.

Here is an example of an EFIS that uses the single cue flight director based on the aircraft triangle and wedge command bars. Many consider this display to be the easiest to learn and use.



Here is a similar picture of another single cue design that uses an entirely different type of flight director. The first picture shows a design where the 'miniature airplane' symbol acts as the flight director. In this second picture, the green circle with the magenta diamond is the 'flight director' used for flying...the black aircraft wings symbol is not used to control the aircraft. Both aircraft are on an instrument approach final.



This third picture shows a typical dual cue flight director. The black aircraft symbol is flown to center on the intersection of the two magenta bars. The horizontal bar shows pitch command, and the vertical bar shows track or heading command.