Simplicity, user friendliness and graceful degradation
Gums,
Like you I have absolutely zero experience in modern liners like the MAX or NEO. But when reading accident and incident reports, I get the feeling that beside the lack of proper and sufficient training, the modern liners are needlessly over complex, not user friendly, have poor and unintuitive man-machine interphase and when their systems degrade, they degrade very ungracefully. I know both Airbus and Boeing pilots who all tell me their machines are a joy to fly when all bells and whistles are working properly, but I don’t understand why the manufactures have chosen to go down the path of complexity, when I know from personal experience that an aircraft can be built in another way.
I know that most normal pilots are in love with their specific aircraft type, but going through the types I have flown in my career so far, the F-16 stands out above all other types in the way it is designed. For some reason it appears that when the F-16 was designed, Boyd, Hillaker and the rest of the so-called Fighter Mafia members actually understood what the pilots needed both when every system was working, but also when things went bad. They managed to build a very simple, user-friendly and from a technical point of view genius aircraft.
To begin with, the flight control system, the worlds first full FBW system in a combat aircraft, was very effective, robust, simple, reliable (when the first hiccups were dealt with) and best of all, so fantastically pilot friendly, that most pilots will feel that the aircraft becomes an extension of their body after half the take-off run on their first flight in the aircraft.
I don’t understand why it is not possible to build an airliner with such a clever flight control system? As you described, who needs dedicated flap levers? You only need flaps during take-off and landings, so why not integrate the flap function with the gear handle, as you need your gear to be down when taking off or landing. Flaps that can be manually selected down without the landing gear if a situation ever arises where it is needed (intercepting a cessna at 90 knots), and flaps that will retract by themself if an overspeed is about to happen. And by the way, the system changes the control gains from take-off/landing gains to cruise gains with the gear handle position. Automatic leading edge flaps that drop down on rotation to increase lift, and instantly go up to dump lift when touching down on landing. No need to arm them like spoilers and no need to stow them in case of rejected landing. A wing that changes shape (again by the use of leading edge flaps), so as to always have the optimal shape for the actual flight regime (with an envelope much wider than the typical airliner).
And in the very rare case where the system malfunctions, it degrades so gracefully that the pilot probably wont even notice any change in flying characteristics (like when the bus changes to direct law). Loose a control surface (loose like in it has fallen off), have a runaway elevator trim go full nose down, or even worse, have a LEF pointing straight up like in gums LEF incident, and still be able to counteract the roll, pitch or yaw with less then superhuman power, by just applying a bit more force then normal on the side stick.
And all this was designed in the mid 70’s. One would think that it would be possible to make an even better flight control system today. A system that would help the pilots instead of defeating them. Of course, complex systems are fine and work well if the operators are well trained, experienced pilots that understand the systems and all of their sub modes, but the average pilot today as I see him/her, is only trained to the minimum requirements, doesn’t get a lot of stick time, and doesn’t really understand the system 100%.
Aircraft engineers, is it not possible to keep it simple stupid anymore?