Originally Posted by
Fly Aiprt
My experience in designing aircraft systems (not for Boeing ;-) is, the key is research for graceful failure.
If when your system fails, average crews get overwhelmed, then something is wrong with the system, not the crew...
That is, provided you actually test your system in real life in real airplanes, which we are not sure Boeing actually did.
And there is no need to this day, to resort to full autonomous commercial flight the technology is not mature to envisage yet.
As a designer, just do your homework, do study ergonomics and human factors, and you'll be the guy up to the task.
As to considering the crews being overwhelmed as not being "up to the task", well the people I know of, that have actually encountered life threatening situations with complex multiple alarms/failures, are far more tolerant than you are.
Because they know that they also have been overwhelmed, like anyone of us would have been, whatever our abilities, real or supposed.
An
A330 crew recently had a major electrical failure that generated
62 ECAM's (if my sources are correct) and landed in the the middle of nowhere at 0345 am body clock time on a short runway. I suspect when the facts come out about this it will be seen as one of the remarkable aviation achievements
in spite of the automaton, bells & whistles.
Computers, automating & system design have a long long way to go before we can even begin to think eliminating carbon based pilots.