Originally Posted by
Svarin
Then why the aircraft that can be flown by "concierges" ? If not to recruit, train, pay, and respect pilots like "concierges" ? Remember the late eighties. Refusing to see an intent there is naive.
Unhelpful. One man (a man who by all accounts is now very elderly and frail), in a state of exuberance, said these controversial things 24 years ago. He was employed by Airbus Industrie as a product evangelist, but I can categorically state he was not speaking for the engineers who designed and built the system. We now know this, and as such this should be disregarded with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Airbus have acknowledged this - why can't some people just let it go?
Originally Posted by
rudderrudderrat
I wish AI had fitted a big red switch to turn off the Flight Control computers and place it into Direct Law. I am led to believe that B777 has one fitted?
What good would that do? Captain Sullenberger is universally regarded as a pilot's pilot and yet he chose to start the APU - in part to keep the protections online as a backstop if things got hairy - which is precisely what they were designed to do. If the Airbus systems were as unreliable as some on here are trying to claim, why didn't he just sod the APU and wait for the RAT to drop (which would have given him standby instruments and Direct Law)?
I've already said three times on this thread that the Airbus FBW design had input from pilots central to the requirements-gathering stage (and have provided supporting evidence from my late professor that this was indeed the case). Some pilots may resent the technological intrusion, and this is something that has been true going all the way back to the first hydro-mechanical stick-pusher devices (hat-tip D.P. Davies). This is not something that has its roots in the move to FBW.
Originally Posted by
Svarin
What is specific to FBW aircraft is the changing of Flight Controls Computers, through successive software versions. This is done very discreetly. Some mistakes get corrected before they have a chance to do damage. Some are corrected after a fact (or not). But more than that, the very multiplicity of successive versions of such a critically critical piece of software and equipment will introduce a whole new set of potential problems. Specialists call these Byzantine faults, in reference to an ancient war involving traitorous generals.
And everything possible is done to ensure that the chance of that kind of fault happening is mathematically extremely remote, which in this day and age is the closest thing you'll ever get to a guarantee it won't happen from an honest engineer.
Originally Posted by
Svarin
IBut I will not accept to play scapegoat for a system that claims to be safer than I am when it is easy, and that evades responsibility when things go wrong.
You mean you don't believe in Silicon Heaven?
(but where would all the little calculators go?) 
In all seriousness - as a software engineer, albeit of a grade significantly lower than those who specified and built the systems we're talking about, I've patiently tried to explain exactly why all the old rubbish about concierges, pilotless airliners, and preventing pilots from doing what is necessary to rescue the aircraft is - indeed - rubbish, and I've tried to explain that the engineering disciplines behind the systems that are there, which are designed to assist the pilots - and nothing more - are every bit as stringent, if not more so, than the mechanical and hydraulic engineering disciplines that made the previous generation of jet aircraft possible.
But it feels like I'm talking to a brick wall in this case, because none of the posters who keep pushing the software failure theory appear to be taking a blind bit of notice of what I'm saying. If I was to take the same attitude against the pilots on here, it would be considered the height of rudeness, and I'd probably be banned
toute-suite. However as this is a pilot's forum I have to accept this as my lot, and I'm fine with that.
As a software engineer - one who takes my discipline seriously - I'm fully aware of what can go wrong with software, and yet I'm perfectly sanguine about getting on a FBW airliner, much as I am any other. If I had to pick a bone with Airbus, I'd worry more about the continued use of Kapton wiring insulation that I ever would be about the possibility of a Byzantine software failure causing an accident. In the late '90s, I had to be sanguine about getting on 737s, despite the knowledge that the rudder hardover problem had not been satisfactorily solved. I've had to be sanguine about getting on an old 747 jumbo in the summer, despite no movement on inerting systems being fitted to the central fuel tank. I've had to get on a Fokker F-28 in foul weather, knowing that if deicing wasn't done properly we'd be in significant trouble. Hell, I've sat in an RAF Chipmunk knowing that the cables are right underneath my feet and the engine design dates from a time before my grandmother was born!
I boarded these aircraft in the certain knowledge than almost none of my fellow passengers were as aware of the specific potential dangers as I was, and yet at no point did I feel the need to jump up and declare "Hey, this aircraft is known to have a major safety issue! If I were you I'd get off this 'plane and maybe sue the airline and manufacturer for ever suggesting you would be safe getting on it!". I'd have documented evidence proving that the statement was categorically true, but I wouldn't be helping anyone because the chances of such a thing happening on that particular flight were infinitessimally small.
So why is it that it's considered OK to bash FBW Airbus designs on here with absolutely no evidence that software had anything to do with the accident? Why is it OK to keep rehashing ill-advised remarks made by a single Airbus employee twenty-three years ago to claim that Airbus are somehow complicit in the "dumbing-down" of pilot training, when it's clear that if and when it does happen it is clearly the fault of the airlines who abuse the presence of automation in this way? Why is it that some are quick to blame the Airbus computers for handing control back to the pilots, when this is something that has affected many airframes from many manufacturers over the years? And why is it treated as a certainty that pilots would have been able to recover from this particular pitot-static failure incident (if indeed that does turn out to be a major factor), when prior evidence suggests that pilots are no more capable of diagnosing pitot-static failures at night over water and providing the correct remedial action than the computers are (re: Birgenair, Aeroperu)?