Quite true. But, I have read enough from those that HAVE flown these types to know that I'm glad I never had to. It is utterly amazing to read the differences expressed by those that fly these things as to how various systems operate. There are disagreements everywhere. The manuals are simply too full of information that not even a computer scientist could possibly remember/recall in the time of need. Who ever heard of an aircraft having THREE different flight control laws?!
Whatever happend to AF447, apparently happend so fast, the crew had no chance to sort out all the warnings being displayed on their panel. They probably had no chance to simply FLY their aircraft.
Whenever I read these loooong threads about crashes, and the myriad of people complaining about non-professionals putting in their 2p worth, previously i've wondered if people have too short a fuse. Now however you're talking my specialist subject, and i'm biting my tongue a bit on the relative opinions expressed on computer-related flight systems.
What I will say however is that I agree with this quote - i.e. despite the slow creep of computer systems into flight, it's obvious that the knowledge and workload on the average Captain & F/O are at times still way too high to be able to "just fly the aircraft" when needed.
I will stop short of suggesting that it's human preconception that is stunting the introduction of more computerisation into systems, but i'm willing to bet that those people thinking "computers" are thinking "MS Windows and blue screen of death", and in that sense you couldn't be comparing apples and oranges much harder if you tried.
Granted it's not all there yet, but i'd state it's not far off. For instance, in this day and age it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to be able to reliably plot where you are on the planet in the X, Y, and Z plane, and given the satellite height data of the globe it's therefore almost inexcusable (IMHO) that we still have interfaces with the terrain. That's a pretty facile example, but you get where i'm coming from.
Maybe in a forum of pilots it's a pretty unpopular stance to take, arguing that computer control could probably do the job in the long run, but step back 50 years and see where we've come from there. Now step forward 20 years and you're probably going to find more and more of your beloved flight controlled by computers. It's something you might hate, but it's a trend that's only going one way IMHO. Thankfully, it's going the same way as the safety figures, and I for one am pretty sure there's more than just a vague relationship between the two.
Anyhow, this is drifting about as off-topic as it could get, and so i'll end it here as it's probably a thread in it's own right and I really wouldn't want this to turn into a s**tfight either. In fact, if you want to reply to this one, take it to a new thread - I encourage it
