Originally Posted by
HarryMann
Very much due to the accuracy of CFD/Wind tunnel and other methods of quantifying whole a/c behaviour up to and beyond any likely flight conditions, test or operationally. The high Mach upper certification limits might possibly produce the most uncertain (& disturbing) behaviour, but still pretty well mapped out beforehand.(think the A380 was about M.92 ?)
Not taking anything away from test pilots, but of course the job must be by nature very different to say the early 50's when much less was known, and CFD was just a dream!
I'd attribute the somewhat safer flight test environment to changing attitudes towards test safety as much as anything else, rather than to any great whizz-bang technology. There's been more than enough flight test casualties in the last generation, in any case. (And if you factor in the very much reduced number of development programmes these days, and that much of the development that there is is systems driven, rather than flight envelope stretching ...)