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Old 30th Dec 2012, 00:39
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DozyWannabe
 
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@Chris Scott - in general, thanks for the support, but I want to be clear here - no offence:

Originally Posted by Chris Scott
Dozy Wanabee has a tendency to regard Airbus FBW through rose-tinted spectacles
I most certainly do not. I am as well aware of its potential drawbacks as I am of its positive aspects and I completely understand why a departure from the de facto control setup that had been engineered to resemble the post-war state-of-the-art would cause consternation, particularly among the piloting community. Despite being a software man, my late Prof. was actually a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic and he taught us all to always question, test and evaluate in the way that all engineers should.

As an engineer, it is central to my credo that there is no such thing as a perfect system. The Airbus FBW control setup is an imperfect evolution of an imperfect system - that is not in question. The debate is therefore a subjective assessment of whether the benefits of the newer system outweigh the drawbacks, as opposed to the very real benefits and drawbacks inherent in the old system and as such it is not going to be resolved any time soon, if ever.

I doubt that even the highly-respected Gordon Corps (Lyman, please note) could have overruled Mr. Ziegler on those fundamental engineering issues.
Capt. Ziegler, despite having a degree in engineering, never really exercised that qualification. He may have been the project lead and arbitrator, but he had absolutely no authority to overrule Capt. Corps and his team on engineering matters. In fact all the teams had ultimate power of veto - if any aspect of the design could not be accepted by all, they all went back to the drawing board and started again.

That aside, I acknowledge and respect your opinion on interconnected PFCs and moving throttles. However I hope you will agree that the much-feared negative impact on safety held over these factors in the late '80s has not been borne out by the record of the Airbus FBW types. In fact we've had plenty of accidents in the interim where these elements were present and yet made no material difference to the outcome. Loath as I am to give much weight to anecdotal evidence, it does at least raise the question of how necessary such things are, does it not?

Last edited by DozyWannabe; 30th Dec 2012 at 01:36.
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