Originally Posted by
Water pilot
Unfortunately it seems like Boeing went into this with their eyes wide open. They knew exactly what would happen and they probably had a good idea of how many times it would happen. Their assumption (hope) which they have stated often was that the pilots could handle the failure, which is a pretty strange approach to safety design in my opinion.
It is a standard approach to safety design, THE reason pilots are in the cockpit is to deal with problems that the automatics cannot and that is standard practice for all manufacturers.
The standard design of flight management systems is that the software will deal with most eventualities but when it starts getting more complicated for the beast of little (286) brain to deal with and the software cannot sort out what to do. rather than carry on increasingly complex and expensive coding to fully automate the system, the FMS is designed to disconnect or enter an 'alternate mode' and the pilot is expected to take over. The same is generally true for all aircraft automation. Pilots 50 years ago operated entire flights without automation; leg and arm strength and methods to fly aircraft with problems was an expected part of being a pilot. As automation and 'glass cockpits' have been introduced the length of time pilots actually control the aircraft and the number of occasions that the automatics need the pilot to take control have been reducing. This has not gone unnoticed by the beancounters who have reduced manual flying and training for manual flying; and simulator slots are becoming pre-warned box ticking. [yes I know these are worst cases]
The result is pilots that are less prepared as failures are rare, and less capable to cope with a failure when it does occur and by definition the failures are more complex because they may cause a cascade of events in the automation. It is an unsafe assumption by the FMS and systems designers that pilots are 'happy'
or even capable of switching off all automatics and flying manually. Remember, there was quite a lot of back pressure by some pilots about deskilling when these automated systems were brought into service. An analogy is a driver of a self-driving car who is allowed to occasionally touch system controls when parking or leaving a parking spot but otherwise just monitors progress.... suddenly finding after raucous alarms, that the car is a stick shift with no synchromesh requiring double declutching and 'heel and toe' gear changing while braking without power brakes or power steering and the problem is a deflating tire at speed, with fading brakes, on a steep down hill winding icy road at night with poor lights. It doesn't help the older drivers saying can't you cope with a simple soft tire?
The automation manufacturers and air frame builders expect pilot capabilities that are no longer there in line pilots the pilots are not trained for them. The forecast deskilling has arrived.
So where to go from here? The assumptions made by the manufacturers must be met by the operators or the aircraft should not be purchased. It doesn't help that 'needs no (re)training' is used to tempt beancounters into further deskilling. There are actually 2 ways to go from here and it is a close run thing which will win.
1. The first is to train the pilots to be able to fly the aircraft when the automatics disengage and the pilot must fly the aircraft AND cope with the problem(s) that caused the automatics to fail. That training and continuation training costs money, money that often was not budgeted for
2. The second approach is to ensure that the
automatics do not fail. This costs manufacturers a lot of money
once, when the systems are built (analysis/design/manufacture/test/fault fix/regression test) but once solved for one aircraft it is solved for all of them so the cost is shared over all the manufactured aircraft. And of course if the automatics failure rate is less than 10^
-9 -- then it will be said that "we really do not need pilots" and the savings there would be huge.
Guess which option is going to receive the most support