Alargeplanemaker Industrie found that their rendition of FBW certainly had more failure modes than they had time to validate, and thereafter, in service, new and novel system behaviour came to light, including sensor input errors, hardware errors, and cascading faults that resulted in abnormal system behaviour following a hardware fault. (Harley-D would have patented such lousy performance and turned it into icons of tasteful design).
PBL notes that there are fundamental issues related to validating system design, and there is the issue. If the system design requires the pilot and dog to safeguard it's performance as it is rationally not achievable to develop a truly fault tolerant failsafe system, then the mere act of placing the least reliable component in monitoring duties (pilot not the dog...) in such an out of the loop position ensures poor performance. This is not going to elegantly resolve itself in the short term. Any system that places the pilot further away from the active cognitive demands of control is going to end up with the dog being the most situationally aware and reliable component of the program, (other than distractions such as food, ear rubs, spot marking and
"Squirrel!").
As we seem to be at an impasse on reducing "Human Error" in system design and operation, seems a sad state of affairs to consider that "Canine Error" is easier to chew on. Would the dog not have the same issues though of inadequate dog rest, poor pay scales, low self esteem, Man-Machine-Canine interface issues, inadequate sanitation facilities, and airline food fit-for-humans-only.
I can state from experience that dogs get somewhat confused in barrel rolls, and just hate negative g, but of course that is entertaining at least, when they have big ears. The wonder is that a dog will still chase after the plane to get on board with their pack leader. On the other hand, Caesar Millan would have a new business in behaviour modification of the dogs, probably cheaper than a full evaluation of a software code's/hardware design's potential for aberrant behaviour.
Actually, I think that the dog whisperer could have some pointers for current airline management to stop them being bitten by their staff, and at least would have a chance to work on the incontinence issues, although I suspect the erosion in the industries remuneration to the extent that pilots need to work until they have 2 feet in the grave may be a factor in any increased prevalence in incontinence in our Chuck Yeager's.
Perhaps, crews are just p****d off...
