Analysing FlightData
Does anyone (Airbus, Boeing, large carriers) systematically or on an ad-hoc basis gather and analyse flight data other then when there is a crash?
in the recent Airbus overrun there is much discussion about just how unusual it is to forget to pull the throttle back on landing. Well how often does it happen? It seems to me if we want to systematically drive improvement then you need to know the answers to these questions without waiting for people to die (a few times).
Some 25years ago the company I worked for would pull error log data from computers that gave folks like me driving reliability inmprovements a large database that we could trawl through to see how often a given event happened. If something was not in our usual snapshot of data we could send an ad-hoc request for different specific one-off data to be sent to us.
So, how often does someone forget to put a throttle back to idle, and when they do, how long does it usually take them to work it out?
Obviously there are a ton of other benefits also, such as checking if people have upgraded their software to the latest rev.
If this is being done properly then for any fault (in the larger "man-machine sense") Airbus or Boeing would be able to immediately quantify the impact and potential frequency and use this as a process for driving continous improvement. Please tell me it is already in place.