Originally Posted by
rudderrudderrat
Correct. When manually flying I could "feel" the aircraft getting slow because the elevator would feel heavy in order to maintain altitude (until I manually trimmed the elevator). No so with AB FBW.
Thus far we have not had a serious UAS incident on the 777 to see what the latest generation of "artificial feel" will do when a significant data source is compromised.
I wouldn't call that "coped" - I'd call that given up!
Even my old Boeing 707 A/P would have remained engaged, all that would have been required would have been manual thrust adjustment.
I think you're misunderstanding the point I was making - the FBW system is distinct and separate from the Autopilot/FMC system. They pass data back and forth where necessary, but they are entirely different in terms of purpose, hardware and software. Now, as to what you're saying about old-school autopilots, IIRC in the 707 we're not talking much more than a wing leveller and altitude hold with a turn function. It didn't have an autothrottle or try to manage your speeds, ergo pitot information had no bearing on the design of the thing. Modern aircraft are very different in that respect and autopilot/FMS functionality much more all-encompassing.
Personally I think Airbus made the correct decision to disengage A/P upon confirmed ADR DISAGREE, and yet again we're back to Birgenair, where the A/P did continue to try flying the aircraft with blocked pitot and an erroneous overspeed warning. The result was that the aircraft had a very high pitch angle and it was only the massive amounts of thrust and a hard limit on FMC authority that kept the thing in the air. For all the stick Airbus come in for due to supposedly "encroaching on pilots' authority", their systems are designed to put the pilot in charge very early on in the failure sequence.