Originally Posted by
Right20deg
A human pilot, while able to make an errors of judgement, mis handle, make a slip, a lapse or a mistake can do something quite special that no automation or bot can do.
The human pilot can safely ecover a badly stricken aircraft using skills, experience and fine judgements that would not be available with automation or a bot. So many examples from military and airline history.
Your observation is quite valid. The reliance on automation moves the center of error usually from the pilot towards the system architecture and embedded logic, which is great when it works, and not so great when it doesn't. You don't need Kev Sullivan's cosmic radiation bit flip to mess you up, something as simple as AA 965 disclosed the hidden issue with ARINC standards. Sure, a crew should have picked up the problem, that is what we train to do and try to do, but on one dark night, the operational change resulted in reduced cognitive capacity just as the time available to avoid a disaster went to zero. Both automation and crew processes fell over in that case, but only one had any chance of being able to catch the problem but ran out of time.
Running off the end of the runway as the FD bar is zero attitudes is still incomprehensible as an SA state for any pilot that went solo in a bug smasher, or could drive a car, or ride a bike. The airline concerned needs to go and do a collective belly button contemplation as to how they ended up with that being a solution selected by a trained pilot, as it suggests a gross failure of the total system, not just the pilot, unless, the pilot happened to have a brain tumor or other cognitive impairment. Now, the B777 did have a miserable day many years ago with a high-speed RTO in Nigeria, where the AP had accidentally been engaged, and the driver felt severe restriction when pulling back on the controls. That was an ugly day out and set the manufacturer to print an AOM on the matter, but... golly, following a FD on the ground, is a weird state of affairs, and more bizarre when the guidance is illogical. What has our industry become?