DRW,
Look, my main beef is with the NS article. Its a pretty shoddy piece of work. I don't agree with the emphasis of some of the things you said in the original article but lets just clear the air on a couple of points.
1. There are plenty of awfully designed systems on modern aircraft. I applaud any attempt to improve the equipment we use.
2.
It is no longer acceptable––or necessary––for an airliner full of innocent people to be lost in circumstances of loss of control or controlled flight into terrain.
It never has been acceptable. Any attempts to improve the situation deserve to be supported.
What you will come to is a very clear conclusion––No amount of training will overcome the automatic sympathetic nervous system (a relict of our evolution): Once adrenaline floods into the bloodstream, thinking closes-down.
With all due respect, no ammount of engineering effort will produce a system that is 100% fault proof, no UI design will provide a system that is incapable of being misinterpreted / ignored. With all these things you reach a point of diminishing returns.
So, yes, obviously ultimately anyone can be incapacitated by fear. However, there is no doubt that solid training and experience give you a much better margin before you reach that point.
Ultimately if the system requires any control inputs at all then if someone is panicking or paralysed a safe outcome can not be gaurunteed.
The pilot cannot read one mechanical aesthetic instrument––let alone two. The accident statistics prove that.
Really? What do statistics prove exactly? If a pilot does not succesfully interpret an instrument, how does that prove the design is at fault. When an aircraft is in a million pieces, we don't even know if he was looking at it.
The point is, some of us have had in depth rigorous loss of control training. Most haven't.
Also, you can quote all the academic names you want. Those of us at the coal face in the industry know what the biggest single problem is; weak original training, further atrophied by lack of practice, coupled with complacency at both the individual and the corporate level.
Yes, we would love better equipment, but its only part of the solution and its not a panacea.
Get used to one fact: change, is inevitable
Very used to that concept thankyou. I've seen plenty of change during my time in this profession, (including a good chunk as an avionics instructor) and I've always been happy to grasp the bull by the horns. Unfortunately, accountant driven management practices within the airline community view everything as an opportunity to cut costs. When you look at the industry holistically it is apparent that, regardless of what you and I both think, losing a few hulls world wide anually is deemed acceptable. If this were not the case, the accountants would not be chipping away at our layers of defence. I've experienced first hand the uphill struggle to justify training time - even when the training content is mandated!
Finally DRW, I have to ask this, and its not a willy waving question, but genuine interest, what's your own flying experience? I'd just like to know where you are coming from.
pb