Originally Posted by
MountainBear
Your recent responses in this thread are the perfect illustration of what critics of the airline industry mean when they refer to "engineering by gravestone."
My recent responses are of the who what now?
I don't know if I've given the wrong impression hanging around here for - what is it - 5-6 years now? But if you think I'm for automation über alles, airmanship being a thing of the past and an enthusiastic supporter of the race to the bottom then I clearly haven't been expressing myself properly, so please allow me to disabuse you of that notion.
I think that pilots should be pilots. I think that stick and rudder skills are an important thing that should be maintained and checked on a regular basis even if your day job involves flying a FBW airliner that has protections up the wazoo. I think that the current state of affairs in some airlines - and particularly regional US airlines - is worrying bordering on scandalous.
But I am also a software engineer. Not of the calibre that makes the software that runs the systems on aircraft, but I studied with and under the ones that were and are capable of that, and I cannot *abide* the false dichotomy that is frequently presented here blaming the evolution of automation and technology for the decline in piloting skills.
I love flying - have done since I first boarded a BCal BAC 1-11 at the tender age of two on a family holiday and every time since - I still get a buzz when I get on an aircraft even now my line of work makes it happen a few times a year, and nothing - but *nothing* compares to the first time I was taken up as an Air Cadet in a Chuckmonk and the friendly middle-aged guy in front of me said the magic words "you have control". I only wish I had the money to continue that pursuit and hopefully one day I will. Don't think for a second that I don't consider this a privilege.
This here, what we're talking about is an accident that could and should shake up a complacent industry - some good forward steps have been made but we must keep up a basic knowledge of airmanship among pilots. The advances that FBW brought forth are there to assist, but cannot be thought of as taking the place of proper piloting skill. Everything I've seen indicates that the PF did not even begin to understand the problem, let alone work out a way to solve it and if his training was deficient in that regard it needs to be fixed. I'm seeing failures of CRM, failures of communication and major gaps in basic aeronautical knowledge and I've got to say, I'm concerned - because I want the people in front to know what they're doing when I get on the thing and I wonder how many hours of stall recovery training could have been bought with the money used to furnish the airline executives' houses. This isn't just about Air France (although it would appear they have some major work to do), this is about the industry in general.