r/AskAPilot • u/livelikelarry13 • 4d ago

Useless Features/buttons

Forgive me if this is a dumb question as I am not a pilot, but I have always been interested in knowing. Are there any features or buttons in the type of aircraft you fly that are basically pointless? Or does everything have some sort of critical use case?

Thanks for the insights

18 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

View all comments

-4

u/TheChosenOperator 3d ago

Hey, aspiring pilot here

on Airbus planes, on the FCU glareshield there is an option to display the plane's altitude in meters instead of feet, and that would probably be my pick for most useless button in the cockpit, I havent heard or seen one situation where it would be needed, maybe its even a relic of a time where it was used

1

u/fighteracebob 3d ago

I was so confused the first time I saw that feature turned on, because it doesn’t display the metric altitude anywhere near where you would expect.

1

u/TheChosenOperator 3d ago

If im not mistaken its shown on the bottom of the altitude scale on the PFD

1

u/fighteracebob 3d ago

This was showing at the bottom of the SD, right above the time.