JD-EE
RetiredF4 & airtren, if I wish to be provocative I can argue that AF447 suggests we have gone as far as we can go on transport aircraft which are not fully automated with no humans involved on the flight deck except as special deluxe SLF seats with all its controls disabled, permanently under computer control. That is an "improvement" in the current direction FBW is moving. {o.o}
At least with AF447, data available on the plane, and some improved computers and algorithms the pilots didn't even need to know there was a loss of airspeed indication from all three pitot tubes. There probably are other sorts of incidents that would benefit from a human pilot or two in the cockpit. But, if a rule can be evolved for the humans to follow, wouldn't a computer follow that rule better?
Humans are for when the rule based flying vanishes. But, the sense I get from descriptions of flight training as have floated through this discussion is that it is very very rule based with a lot of if-then-else-endif involved. That is a computer's playground. And on a computer's playground humans do very badly. While you add a three digit number in your head the computer has added millions or billions of them (depending on whether you are autistic or not.)
I unfortunately must agree with your assesment.
There was a time, when pilots used their knowledge (f.e. about aerodynamics, systems, navigation, flightphysiological aspects, weather, ATC, and so on ) to plan and execute the flight. There was a lot of self learned and self aquainted behaviour envolved, sometimes taught as "technique". That was hard work, left a lot room for errors and caused together also some undesired accidents.
New equipment together with automation reduced the workload significantly. To improve safety further, crew reaction to normal and abnormal procedures was developped and streamlined in think tanks from the manufacturer in relation to the new automated systems, and finally we´ve got what we have now and as you describe it.
Unfortunately the knowledge diminished or in some areas got lost in this process as well, as it seemed to be not needed any more. Look at the FCOM or FTCOM, it is a quarter the size of my old F4 Phantom aircraft Dash One. We aditionally had handouts about aerodynamics, navigation, WX, Radar operation, just to name a few. It got replaced by SOP and ECAM and QRH with step by step processes, which can be done by anybody who can read and operate the keyboard of a computer.
There seems to be no longer enough background knowledge available to understand, why those step by step procedures have to be followed and applied and what kind of reactions the application of those procedures will produce in the airframe.
There are for sure pilots out there and especially present in this forum, who still care and try to stay ahead of those procedures and not become the slave of them, but to be the knowlegable executioner of those procedures. They read accident reports, they talk with technicians and engineers, they ask questions and they make up their mind. And when they might find themselves in a similar situation like AF447, they will have learned from the case before the report is out and before the procedures had been changed. They would use manual trim to get the THS down although it is nowhere written in the procedures.
But how many of the pilots are participating here, how many are reading here (or in other similar forums), and how many just go home after their flight and call it a day? What are operaters doing to keep their pilots up to the notch, even improve their knowledge base except order the standard sim sessions? What do the regulators do to control and improve the knowledge after handing out the licence except to manage the renewal of the licence?
Its the system, that is sick and needs treatment badly.