Despite what many would like to think, an increase in automation is not necessarily an increase in safety.
This is entirely speculation on my part but I imagine that if it were possible to graph safety vs automation for flightdeck operations you would get something roughly resembling an inversely exponential curve ie. it is highly worthwhile to a point, after which it gives a reducing increase in safety for a given increase in automation.
The bottom line is that an automated machine makes "decisions" based on parameters and rules. Once reality decides to step outside the machine's parameters the automatics are redundant. For example last week on passing 400 feet on departure a heron appeared in the flightpath. Does this mean we start fitting aircraft with bird avoidance technology?
With regard to the public perception of pilots being the cause of many crashes and wanting "biggles to sit on his hands", it should be remembered that we are one of the few industries that washes its laundry in public. Unfortunately TV programmes on butchers and food poisoning don't rank highly on TV producers to-do lists.
sr
Last edited by speedrestriction; 28th Dec 2007 at 11:50.
Reason: punctuation problems