BOAC;
I quite agree but am pointing out that the philosophy change, in ceasing to 'protect' the aircraft from piloting, at AB, would be too dramatic
I realize you're being a bit facetious and that you don't like automation per se, or perhaps the way it has been handled. There is plenty of room I think, to grow with technology, while ensuring a robust critique based upon the experience and knowledge we, as airline pilots have gained. In the early days when we did so, Airbus was not the least bit interested in our input and critique, and actively so. But much has changed since the 90s. Today, there is no percentage in dissing for dissing's sake - one must get on with it. In fact, one risks becoming irrelevant in such dogged pursuits but I hasten to add that there remain wonderful airliners out there which are completely conventional and a delight to fly. I've flown them and truly enjoyed them and trusted them. I would have been quite happy to have retired off the DC8, but we're all along for the ride whatever it is.
It's complicated. For a greater foundation regarding the notions of automation one perhaps has to return first to the military where FBW was not about "protection", it was about
capability, clearly a very different motivation than airline flying!
An airline managements' greatest mistake as automation developed, is buying into the (manufacturer's) notion that aircraft automation was all about saving money in training, reducing crew complement costs and 'easing' hiring practises, (not paying for 'expensive' experience because "experience was in the software" kind of idea).
The L1011, being a design from a primarily military designer, incorporated some wonderful notions of early automation, (while it's contemporary competitor's design remained a bread-and-butter, pedantic conventional design, very successful commercially and 'nice-to-fly' I believe but ordinary). The L1011 was a dream to learn and to fly. It came out of the chute CATIIIc-ready; the -500 series came with a brilliant FMC system.
Boeing advanced the notion of "automation" through integration of the FMC and autopilot system. While it was Airbus that took automation into new territory with FBW, Boeing's triple-seven incorporated a deeper level of automation than the B767, (but not nearly as much as the new A320), but Boeing has fully embraced automation in the B787, and they have pioneered CFRP as a primary structural approach. I wished there was a B787 Ops Manual floating around so we could get a detailed look at what level of automation exists and how the standard problems of fbw flight controls have been solved.
The problems are not of technology but of psychology, perception, expectation and the strong tendency to "normalization" as a way of viewing the world. "Normal" is a design feature today whereas it was anything but in the early days of aviation and automation. Error-trapping behaviours..."recursiveness" are some of the characteristic behaviours intended to come to terms with inevitable human "error", for
nobody makes Mistakes. Mistakes are the result of accepting one's actions as being "in-concert" with perceived circumstances and events. Otherwise, such actions are "intentional", (rule-breaking, etc) and we already know that pilots never set out on a flight to intentionally make a mistake or have an accident.
Automation does not interfere with this error/threat management process but the "veil of automation", which has been greatly lifted over the past twenty years or so, must continue to be lifted, and it is not solely the pilot who must do such lifting. The question, as we all know, is..."What made sense to the person such that they acted in a way that, in our wonderful way of invoking hindsight bias, "caused" the accident. A corollary to that understanding might be, - To what extent can design, by itself, break causal pathways and still not render such serious threats transparent to the crew? Much has already been done by virtue of continuous changes in software as a result of exchanges with the industry. But it almost seems as if we are at the point of needing a paradigm-shift to next steps.