General aviation
Garmin G1000 in a Cessna 182
Many modern general aviation aircraft are available with glass cockpits. Systems such as the Garmin G1000 are now available on many new GA aircraft, including the classic Cessna 172. Many small aircraft can also be modified post-production to replace analogue instruments.
Glass cockpits are also popular as a retrofit for older private jets and turboprops such as Dassault Falcons, Raytheon Hawkers, Bombardier Challengers, Cessna Citations, Gulfstreams, King Airs, Learjets, Astras, and many others. Aviation service companies work closely with equipment manufacturers to address the needs of the owners of these aircraft.
Consumer, research, hobby & recreational aviation.
Today, smartphones and tablets use mini-applications, or "apps", to remotely control complex devices, by WiFi radio interface. They demonstrate how the "glass cockpit" idea is being applied to consumer devices. Applications include toy-grade UAVs which use the display and touch screen of a tablet or smartphone to employ every aspect of the "glass cockpit" for instrument display, and fly-by-wire for aircraft control.
Spaceflight.
The Space Shuttle glass cockpit
The glass cockpit idea made news in 1980s trade magazines, like Aviation Week & Space Technology, when NASA announced that it would be replacing most of the electro-mechanical flight instruments in the space shuttles with glass cockpit components. The articles mentioned how glass cockpit components had the added benefit of being a few hundred pounds lighter than the original flight instruments and support systems used in the Space Shuttles. The Space Shuttle Atlantis was the first orbiter to be retrofitted with a glass cockpit in 2000 with the launch of STS-101. Columbia was the second orbiter with a glass cockpit on STS-109 in 2002, followed by Discovery in 2005 with STS-114, and Endeavour in 2007 with STS-118.
NASA's Orion spacecraft will use glass cockpits derived from Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
As aircraft operation depends on glass cockpit systems, flight crews must be trained to deal with failures.The Airbus A320 family has seen fifty incidents where several flight displays were lost.