PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Automation Bogie raises it's head yet again
Old 14th Jan 2011, 20:06
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DozyWannabe
 
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NOTE : I'm pretty sure Safety Concerns has his tongue planted firmly in cheek, before any catcalling happens...

On a more serious note though, autopilots and flight management systems masking potential dangers is not peculiar to any model or manufacturer. Off the top of my head we have not only the aforementioned China Airlines 747SP incident, but also the fatal ATR icing accidents, where the AP kept the aircraft trimmed until it could no longer cope and handed a practically unflyable aircraft back to the pilots. That's before we get into the AA 757 at Cali and other losses of locational awareness.

The rule of thumb should always be that the AP is there so that you can disengage your hands from the controls while managing other aspects of the flight - one should *never* disengage one's brain from monitoring the situation, no matter how clever the automatics.

One of the reasons I've tried to keep my head down on this thread is that it is very much focused on the issue of automation. My contention has always been that automation is simply a tool, no matter how advanced it may be on any particular airframe - and as such cannot be responsible for good or for ill in it's own right. That said, any individual pilot who relies on the automation at the expense of their own situational awareness is making a rod for their own back at best and a noose for their own neck (and potentially hundreds of others) at worst. Any airline whose management knowingly reduces core competencies (i.e. How Aircraft Fly 101) prior to putting a newly-qualified pilot in the flight deck using modern automation as a reason for doing so should be considered criminally negligent.

Using Airbus as an example, the detractors on this forum like to use the words of the product evangelist at the time of the A320's launch as justification for their particular bugbear. But he was only one man with a specific job to do (i.e. talk up the accomplishments of the aircraft) - and the actual design of the system was thrashed out by hundreds of engineers, with many pilots either consulting or directly involved (one of whom was Gordon Corps, who I've never heard anyone on here say a bad word about). I would quite happily say that I don't think any of those involved would be anything less than horrified at the thought of automation being used as a sticking plaster to put pilots in the right seat before they were ready, and as a cost-saving measure even more so.

Originally Posted by DC10 Fever
The Captain's persistent intention of getting the AP back on is frightening when you're only getting erroneous readings back.
I think it's a basic cognitive thing. I have no idea as to how much - if at all - this translates to the real world, but there is a perception that when solving a problem, it can be helpful to let "George" take it while a member of the crew performs troubleshooting. In this particular case the Captain doesn't make the mental connection that the autopilot can only work with the same erroneous readings that he's getting from his instruments - although the amount of stress that the situation exerted has to have been considerable.

Interestingly, this crash was fundamentally caused by the static ports being rendered inoperable by being covered with speed tape, but if you look at the CNN News link at the bottom of the Wikipedia page, you can see that the press at the time reported it as a computer fault. You can bet that many more people saw and internalised that erroneous information than the correct information that would have been released to much less fanfare several months down the line.

Last edited by DozyWannabe; 14th Jan 2011 at 20:30.
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