I flew along on a small private jet recently, their system was 10x easier to understand and more capable than the typical airliner... So it is possible, probably even at a lower cost.
I don't know what the answer is but attitudes generally flow down from the top, so I'd imagine a good start would be to somehow re-install creative technical people in the top-end leadership roles.
Consequently, you look around and see nothing but conservative people putting in their time. If you're someone more driven, you get tired and leave.
However there's a constant care about making things that are certifiable, and make business sense (otherwise it's just not going to happen). It seems to me that it's difficult for people outside this type of industry to appreciate how certification impacts the decisions.
We strive to make systems that are reliable, easy to use and maintain, and efficient; but they have to make their way to the customer, through the authorities and business constraints.
It's the same reason banks are still running things like their 30yo COBOL code. The cost of replacing it isn't the problem. The problem is, if it's been running reliably for 30 years, then what justification could you possibly come up with for accepting the risk of replacing it?
Hell no. In aeronautics, you want safety-conscious, technically conservative, quality paranoid engineers. You need that because you don't want to retrain pilots on the last release every Patch Tuesday. A lot of the design that goes into the cockpit is to minimize training costs and that is a major procurement driver (remember the 737 MAX?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIAO0mnQU7g
I recently watched a few videos of flights in the Cirrus Visionjet, literally the smallest and lowest cost single engine private jet aircraft on the market. Its electronic cockpit looks very straightforward and logical in design.
If you can fly a G1000 in a Cirrus piston or Cessna, the G3000 is an easy transition.
The avionics and FMS of a typical airliner is positively COBOL by comparison. To get type rated in modern GA jets is pretty easy because the avionics are generally what you are already used to. However, the G1000/G3000 aren’t part 25 certified, however there is now a G5000 that is Part 25 legal, so I expect there to be some considerable improvements trickling up into the bigger jets. (Part 25 is basically “transport category” aircraft.)
While it's no G1000 or G3000, the G500 TXi, GTN 750 Xi, and GI 275 are all very straightforward, with engine indications being displayed on the G500 Xi in an easy to navigate package.
Being behind the aircraft as far as interpreting the situation/ indicators and not knowing what recovery steps to take seem to be a reoccurring problem, at least as far as catastrophic type situations.
I wonder if simulated error scenarios ever occur during flight -- could be a good way to expose pilots to rarely used recovery procedures within realistic day to day contexts ...
You can have all the warnings and etc, but how the human processes and interprets and responds is just not always predictable. If they misread a situation, the time to recover/ self correct isn't often very long.
Granted, they've obviously made great progress to some extent, as safety as far as airliners go is pretty incredible these days.
So the small jet in my example indeed has less regulations than a larger airliner. And would probably not be allowed to be used for commercial air transport, only charter flights.