Excess reliance on automation - the old story again
Recent happenings to the cruise ship Costa Concordia revealed that despite the availability of a fistful of wonderful aids to navigation the captain still found himself literally between rocks and a hard place.
The letter below to the editor of an Australian newspaper could equally apply to the constant drive to ever increasing reliance on automation in airliners.
Quote:
"Technology should be seen as an adjunct to common sense or learned intelligence, not an alternative.
With the sinking of the Costa Concordia perhaps, as a start, we really do need to take calculators out of primary school classrooms".