1. SAFETY

A. Trend Monitoring

Trend.monitoring is the monitoring of changes in the trends that are indicated on certain instruments corresponding to the passage of time, making possible the evaluation of the operating condition of systems.
JAL is attempting to replace the flight engineer with EICAS on the B747-400.
EICAS is only capable of checking whether a system value is over a given limitation and can not judge the operating trend of the system.
When a flight engineer monitors the instruments, he watches the indications so that systems will not exceed limitations or take precautionary measure before limitations are exceeded and deduce the reasons for the malfunctions. It is also possible for the flight engineer to take measures in preventive maintenance before the malfunction becomes critically serious. The flight engineer enables the entire crew to have time in reserve and contributes to the execution and completion of the primary duties of the pilots.
EICAS does not give indications until the limitations are exceeded, which results in a sudden increase in the workload.
The monitoring performed by EICAS is entirely different in quality from that of the flight engineer. The night engineer can be likened to a doctor and EICAS to an inspection staff.

EICAS Strong Points

-watches over all the systems simultaneously
-does not c.ncent,ate on.ne area
-monitors for long durations of time, with each scan requiring only seconds

EICAS Weak Points

-cannot monitor trends
-cannot work in coordination with the night conditions that the pilots are exposed to
-without the night engineer, it cannot act as an interface between man machine
-during multiple problems, it requires longer time to differentiate the EICAS messages than with the three man crew complement, during which time the aircraft must go to a one-man operation mode and furthermore it is more difficult to assess the problem exactly
-since the display is concentrated into one or two CRTs, several pages must be examined to get the overall picture, making the total accessment of the condition of the aircraft difficult
-when EICAS malfunctions, all is lost
-the volume of information is limited
-it limits information during critical phases of flight, there is a difference between not knowing at all and someone knowing but giving the information if and when it is relevant
-pilots cannot continuously monitor the systems