The Airline Pilot has little to do with Flight Testing for Certification, in fact, apart from a few specialist pilots in the airlines the average airline pilot takes no part in the Flight Test Programme.

Once an aircraft has been certificated, however, the airline pilot spends more time on the Flight Deck and has longer to experience the shortcomings of the Certification Programme than anyone else. He is then the Consumer, the man who spends hours with an expensive piece of machinery strapped to him and who suffers over a long period of time any cockpit design defects. For that reason a large part of this paper will be devoted to, I hope, useful criticism of Flight Deck Layouts as they affect the operating crew member.