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Old 11th Nov 2009, 13:09
  #16 (permalink)  
groundbum
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Leeds, UK
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not quite

saying pilots cannot override computers in FBW, unlike the old wire connected controls is a specious. A pilot couldn't decide, mid-flight, to rejig the flight controls and the wire runs and the pulleys and so forth, not since WWI biplanes where the observer climbed out the cockpit to repair battle damage. Since the 1940's pilots have by and large had to make do with the systems installed in their aircraft. wire, hydraulics and now computers.

A lot of the Airbus computers do just replace one function and one wire, and the pilot has plenty of control over the higher level functions that decide what lower level computers do what when. So really things aren't much more "hands off" in panic mode from hydraulics and wire pulley days.

G
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