CONF iture
Quote
'Why not including the complexity of the machine of even the interface in the equation'
Because knowing your machine enables you to deal with its complexity. A level of professionalism is necessary. It is, in fact, a dangerous illusion to regard more modern computerised aircraft as more complex. In fact older aircraft were often the more complex requiring more attention and work. As technology has developed aircraft have in fact become simpler. Certainly aircraft can become even simpler but one cannot attribute what happened to the interface or the complexity of the machine. And if you pause and think how many A330s are flying and how many hours they have flown one cannot call these overly-complex machines. An overly-complex machine could not have survived for such a long time.
We have an aircraft which by all accounts flies well without protections. In fact those who've flown it state that it is one of the better ones to fly manually. We have a culture (that of Air France) in which a certain casualness has developed (an Air France safety audit identifies this). We have certain incidents involving Air France crews which seem to indicate a lack of knowledge of how to handle their aircraft. Putting a machine into an extreme situation then blaming the machine because it is operating outside the parameters it was designed for is futile. The PF put his aircraft into a state where it could not recover. It wasn't the machine that produced this situation but the humans. Understanding why they did so is the important factor here.
As things get safer and we develop more protection against danger paradoxically the danger increases. Humans tend to react to safer situations by dropping their guard. They do not act with caution and thus they pay less attention to safety. This is where training, CRM, culture and psychology all come into play. This is why knowing the machine and professionalism are so important. Remembering that you are responsible for more than one life. But all of this is to do with the people who operate the machine and their responsibility.