Old Carthusian
Helpful and thought provoking post.
The only word of caution that I would add is that we must be very careful before separating "automation" and "training" - the former implies new skills in addition to existing airmanship skills (for when the computer trips out, David's GIGO), not just new skills, and somebody has previously commented that it was a battle for AB's training personnel to maintain even the same level of training in the face of their salesmen arguing cost savings through buying AB and automation costs savings. I fear that the two issues are, or have become, inextricably linked as automation automatically feeds through to training issues.
The CVR so far disclosed is not pleasant reading, from a CRM perspective, and cockpit discipline left something to be desired. I am shocked at how PF got to a stall at FLT380, due to a temporary UAS. The flight should have been immediately stabilised at FLT350, and SOPs should have taken care of the rest, if the pilots had been properly trained. I have previously drawn attention to AF's 3 hull losses (the first for each aircraft type - Concorde/A330/A340), and I see where you are coming from re: an airline culture (your Pan Am example). But I don't think this is a particularly AF issue, and is a much wider problem. AF have many excellent "flyers", particularly those with an ex-military or private aircraft "hobby" background (alas none aboard AF447, to recognise and fly out of the stall once created). So I am broadly, save for this linkage, of the same view as you. Maybe trying to bridge the gap between you and David?
I am always wary of becoming dragged into the Boeing v Airbus debate, not least because I have never flown the latter, but I do believe that AB should never have been marketed as more automation implicitly equals less crew training costs (which their salesmen, at least, did). It should have been that the training costs would go up, as the systems operator skills were added to underlying basic airmanship skills (which would need more simulator honing, as flight crews became increasingly reluctant to - or have been banned from - "hand fly"), and the "saving" should have been marketed as the additional flight envelope protection and reduced risk of a "pilot error" in itself triggering a crash and all the reputational damage caused by an aircrash. Plus the weight/fuel efficiency savings from FBW operation.
It contributed to an "aircraft fly themselves" perception in some quarters (particularly amongst "line" finance directors) , and the number of LOC incidents in recent years is far higher than automation should have permitted if there was not an underlying mischief still to be remedied. So it takes us back to the man/machine interface, and that is heavily training......
Perhaps you, David and I are not so far apart after all (even if we all have a slightly different slant, mine being that training is a sub-branch of automation rather than a separate but linked issue)...?
Last edited by Welsh Wingman; 12th Aug 2011 at 18:44.