[omegant]

My experience after flying 737, MD80, A320, A330 and A340 is that nobody takes special care with cockpit buttons. They are work tools and treated as such.

The main ones (autopilot and flight controls), rarely fail if at all. The only ones failing from time to time are small switches for radio channel volume or cockpit light adjustments and system buttons at the overhead panel that are easy to replace by maintenance.

Touchscreens are not a good option for main controls due to poor visibility(dirt from fingers and sun reflections), hidden submenus, turbulence making hard to press the correct button…

The A350 and 787 are using trackball controlls for submenus and the onboard computers, not a touchscreen.

[omegant]

I must add that one place where we are using touchscreens is in the fly documentation. Most airlines use somekind of tablet, ipad or surface with apps for performance calculation, navigation charts, pdf manuals, etc… they are working mostly ok now a days and I’dont think you can substitute the touch screen with buttons for that without loosing a lot of functions.