PFD Reliability

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Four brand new PFDs in under a 100 hours??? How is this possible? I thought the whole point of the glass panel is its reliability. If the panels were truly going kaput that frequently, that’s insane. No way was that plane airworthy for IMC conditions.


David,
Regarding the preliminary NTSB information on the recent Florida accident, the PFD (which, of course, has not been implicated in the accident to this point) may have just been replaced due to small problems. Not that this is an excuse for the reliability level that a PFD should attain, but the NTSB information by itself doesn’t automatically mean that the PFD isn’t reliable.

That said, it is certainly in everybodyÂ’s interest to get to the bottom of the issue if there is a larger reliability problem.

From the AOPA board:

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The NTSB is proposing to amend reporting requirements of Section 830.5 to include “loss of information from a majority of an aircraft’s certified electronic primary displays (excluding momentary inaccuracies or flickering)”

Anyone interested in submitting comments regarding the change can do so until Feb. 25th, 2005.

Deepak Joshi, Lead Aerospace Engineer (Structures)
National Transportation Safety Board, Room 5235
490 L’Enfant Plaza, SW
Washington, DC 20594


Looks like the feds are interested in this now too.

In reply to:


Looks like the feds are interested in this now too.


Of course they are! They can read. FAA and NTSB investigators DO read the public, private, and mechanic’s message lists of this board. The number of SDRs being filed against the Entegra PFD continues to climb much faster than the failure rate provided during certification. A little birdie told me that COPA also has independent reports of 30% to 40% failure rates from owner surveys. It looks like the FAA and NTSB have decided that they didn’t get / aren’t getting accurate failure numbers from Cirrus / Avidyne, so they are going to generate their own dataset. To be fair they are not going to target Avidyne specifically. Failures of all types of primary electronic flight displays will have to be reported.
By the way do not become too paranoid. Someone is assigned to read the chat room messages of all the type clubs and other aviation groups. COPA is just one of many.

In reply to:


Looks like the feds are interested in this now too.


Joe,

That is very interesting. I think it would be a good development to have an increased focus on reliability, especially with the new batch of “low-cost” PFD’s.