My understanding of these things has always been of a large number of automated sytems and subsystems, with the flight crew acting as the glue to hold it all together (and taking over completely if any of them fail).
However, based on one or two of the discusions appearing on PPRUNE I had begun to think my understanding was falling behind and maybe the automation was becoming a lot more joined up than I believed. Hence my question.
I could be tempted to express it slightly more flippantly (it is Friday afternoon so forgive me).
If the Captian and FO select take-off power and retire to the cabin to play bridge with the first class passengers, how many rubbers could they realistically get in before catastrophe strikes?
