Originally Posted by
Clandestino
Strasbourg crash was caused by misseting 3300 fpm instead of 3.3 degree flight path on FCU (that's autopilot control panel in airbusspeak). FCU has been redesigned since to prevent similar occurences, and i don't know whether it was designed by real pilot, but by my definition, real pilot always check if the autopilot does what it's commanded.
Funnily enough my Software Engineering professor, Peter Mellor was brought in when that happened and when he spoke about it, he said that it was an area of human-computer interaction that was in its infancy in the late 1980s. Now we know that in safety-critical applications, multi-function dials (push/pull for secondary functionality) are a big no-no.
I was an aviation nut long before I became a computer geek though, and in those terms I think that the introduction of the A320 and its brethren were similar to the Comet in the way that they were guinea pigs for a new level of aviation technology. Boeing admitted in the '50s that were it not for the Comet, it's likely that the 707 would have suffered similar problems. This is why I think a lot of the AvB argument is pointless. As a software guy, I can understand the frustration of having a layer of abstraction between the nuts and bolts and their human controller, and I can understand the worry that some pilots had of being rendered superfluous by the new technology. But it was and remains an unfounded fear, because there are no fewer flight deck crew on an A320/30/40 than on a modern Boeing.