Yes, very well and clearly stated, A310.
I recall very well these issues being predicted, mainly by pilots and pilots' associations when the A320 was introduced in the late 80's, early 90's.
Such observations were no surprise to pilots, but airline bean counters, perhaps dealing with the effects of de-regulation and other economic crises, slowly became intoxicated with the cost-savings of the new, two-man cockpits, and holding on to the notion, engendered by the manufacturer, that automation would "fly the airplane" and reduce training and qualification needs. I think that very few if any pilots ever thought this or believed it.
This serious failing of fundamental understanding of aviation not only reduced the number of pilots in the cockpit, (and now some are talking about "one-man cockpits!?"), but over the following two decades would reduce training footprints and enable hiring "less - experienced pilots." The response to such obvious trends which were seen and commented upon back then has been glacial.
These chickens are now coming home to roost. The Flight Safety Foundation is speaking out clearly on the issue. While primarily intended to focus on systems failures and handling, the comment from the Flight Safety Foundation is precisely what this thread is about.
While I think that supporting the automation innovations designed mainly by Airbus is legitimate I think first, that a clear marketing strategy was to leave the impression that the airplane was going to be easy to fly for anyone, that the automated cockpit would be safer than steam-types and that cockpit commonality would reduce qualification and training costs. This has perhaps been true but what was not taken into account was the nature of the airline industry (vice the nature of aviation itself).
Pilots used to know that appropriate use of automation as a supplement to aircraft handling, supported with thorough training, was always the understanding had of such advances, first seen in the B-767, (which was initially to be a three-man cockpit). Through no fault of their own, we are seeing the beginnings of a generation raised on "FS in a comfortable if not naive environment", who don't know what they don't know about aviation.
Automation is not, and has never been the problem; the expectation that automation can replace thinking has been the mistake all along.
In other words, this is neither an Airbus nor a Boeing problem alone. It is a structural problem within the airline transportation system itself which probably went too far in early assumptions regarding automation and the reasons used for cost-reductions.
In more than one way it is the same portentous outcome that we are seeing in response to SMS especially in the US where some airlines have taken advantage of reduced oversight under the program. SMS is not intended as the de-regulation/self-monitoring of flight safety but that is what it became; it was naive and money-driven to think otherwise. On this, I think both the US and finally the Canadian regulator have hearkened to the problem and are acting.
Here is the FSF article:
Reaction to systems failure faces scrutiny
THE way pilots respond to the failure of computer-controlled systems on advanced aircraft is likely to be the next big area to come under scrutiny by safety authorities, a leading US expert believes.
Flight Safety Foundation global chief executive Bill Voss said there was increasing concern about the interface between pilots and aircraft automation, as well as how this should be incorporated into aviation training.
Mr Voss said during a visit to Sydney that he had seen a preliminary analysis of Line Operation Safety Audit (LOSA) reports designed to gauge the prevalence of problems with automation and how well they were managed.
"And the answer keeps coming out to extremely prevalent and very badly managed," he said.
"It's actually a significant threat."
Questions about automation in planes received increased attention after the crash of an Air France Airbus A330 over the Atlantic Ocean last year.
Australians also saw a graphic example of what could go wrong when an Emirates crew in Melbourne mistyped the Airbus A340's take-off weight and struggled to get airborne after a tail-strike.
Investigators have still to reveal what caused an air data inertial reference unit to malfunction and send a Qantas A330 to go on a wild ride through West Australian skies in 2008. Mr Voss also cited a radar altimeter failure to which a crew failed to react prior to a Turkish Airlines crash at Amsterdam; a 2007 TAM A320 runway overrun in Brazil's Sao Paolo where one engine deployed thrust reversers while the other accelerated; and a crash the same year of an Adamair 737 off Indonesia.
"Even if you go back to fairly primitive aircraft like the Adamair accident, they were changing their modes in the weather and actually blanked out their flight display," he said. The internationally renowned air safety expert said there was a common thread through many of the accidents and it was time to train for a new type of emergency that looked at the failure modes in highly automated aircraft. This included talking explicitly about how automation fails, how pilots should cope with it and if they had the "gut skill" to get through the failures.
"These systems are amazing -- they will usually recover themselves, but you've got maybe 30 seconds where you've got to gut through things like the pitot tube (part of the air speed measuring devices) failures we've seen," he said. "That's all it takes -- attitude and power for about a minute and you're out the other side of the problem. But if you don't, you die."
He said pilots needed snappy new phrases for automation failures that were similar to "dead foot, dead engine" slogans that helped them identify which engine had quit.
"The (US Federal Aviation Administration) is probably going to push it and you're seeing some speeches from (FAA administrator) Randy Babbitt, who's very tuned into this stuff," he said.
Reaction to systems failure faces scrutiny | The Australian