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To: C19fan
Flight 8501 Poses Question: Are Modern Jets Too Automated to Fly?

As a retired professional pilot with 40 years and 30,000 plus hours in the air I can say NO! However, that being said the people flying the a/c and the management directing their actions..YES! The work environment today, in a word, sucks! As far as the FAA is concerned 'hours' mean experience. That is not always the case. Where and how did the pilot get those hours? Military, or some flight school diploma mill where a student never learns the basics of spins, stalls, inverted flight and such things as acrobatics on instruments. All the computer stuff is nifty but unlike your car when the chips fail you can't just pull over and call AAA. Someone up there has to know what to do and in most cases that is to hand fly the beast to a safe landing. There is an old saw that there are two special days in a pilots life, one that he knows this will be the day of his last flight and the other one is that he doesn't know it. Always be prepared for the latter.

11 posted on 01/04/2015 6:53:01 AM PST by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: Don Corleone

As an experienced Airbus captain and check airman, I can ask when the last time you flew in an airline flight deck? Knowing how to recover from spins (which, BTW is a basic requirement for a civilian private pilot rating) is worthless in knowing how to safely fly a modern airliner, with or without automation.


15 posted on 01/04/2015 8:06:43 AM PST by Tzfat
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To: Don Corleone

24 posted on 01/04/2015 9:11:04 AM PST by Reeses
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To: Don Corleone

I would never question the hands on experience of professional pilots but, perhaps, a comment upon the systems physics and the design choices of Airbus and Boeing is appropriate.

Airbus fly-by-wire design is computer centric. The aircraft computer sets a flight envelope beyond which the pilot cannot go without significant effort. Worse, Airbus designs are dead stick designs which yield no stick feedback to the pilot.

Boeing, on the other hand, uses a pilot centric design. If the pilot requires a certain out of envelope maneuver then the computer is overridden immediately. Their cockpit design tries to emulate the physical feedback (proprioception) of traditional cockpits.

The implication of these choices is profound. The dead stick A300 accident was simply due to no proprioceptic feedback to the pilot from flipping the stick back and forth (trying to compensate for wake turbulence) eventually ripping off the vertical stabilizer.

From a control systems point of view the Airbus choice was poor. Add this to the over reliance upon automation generally and, specifically, to European Airbus training and you shift the probability of error negatively.

The Air France accident likely occurred due to very poor ergonomics in the cockpit and the fact that a computer reboot or override took too long once an error was detected.

These data are somewhat old (several years) so engineering changes may have been made since the Air France accident. However, I try to avoid Airbus equipment when the flight service station indicates any weather issue.


25 posted on 01/04/2015 9:13:00 AM PST by wjr123
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