Machinbird;
If they're going to recommend an actual change in the SS installation, (
as opposed to merely commenting on it...the word "rationalized" is in the Google translation which I take to mean "mitigated" which I again take to mean "even though there may be a visibility matter which may have contributed to a loss of control, no recommendation to alter the design is made", or something like that), then, along with any backdrive solution, a display of the stick position is going to have to be available because it is not at all easy to judge how much stick deflection is being applied by the other pilot purely by looking at it. This is because, first, the stick movement is small compared to a CC, and second, from the other seat, it is difficult to judge where "neutral" is. Placing a neutral marker near the SS for either the fore-aft or sideways movements of the stick to be accurately judged is difficult given the placement of the stick and it's surrounding structure, and parallax would be an issue.
The same display that we see at takeoff is an obvious solution. Presentation would be slightly different than the takeoff one; (the symbol is not visible on landing). The iron-cross could be placed in a circle. It's position indicates stick position. Concentric markers can indicate degrees and that can even be displayed digitally in a small box which is "attached" to the SS symbol. That's one way to display it on the PFD.
Obviously it wouldn't be there during autoflight and choosing when and how to make the SS symbol available and where, during manual flight, would require thought about of the importance and therefore the attention-getting priority of the information. (
I always found the amber Alternate Law symbols vague and not at all obvious, but then at the time, purely out of decades of habit we flew the airplane as though there were no protections. And we "looked through" the FDs because they were rudimentary and the raw horizon data was "real". The subtle psychological shift that has occurred in the "children of the computer age" who know nothing of airplanes before the kinds of autoflight solutions we have today perhaps requires that a clearer indication be available to the crew that the airplane is in Alternate Law even though it is annunciated on the ECAM and is a checklist item.)
There is an obvious drawback to any new display of information: It must compete for the pilots' attention and possible action and it must be standardized/trained/checked.
However, in this debate regarding back-driven sticks and more information regarding SS position, I think the solutions are not in this direction but in a philosophical shift in approaches to training. In some quarters, it is indeed occurring already as enlightened managers and perhaps the occasional CEO who read a lot more than balance sheets are beginning to comprehend that automation has its place and it is not as "the third pilot".
This shift in training priorities and focus is not something that individual pilots can do by themselves. This is not a home-study-course problem. This is a
performance problem, and must be worked into recurrent simulator sessions, check flights and must have standards by which success or "drift into failure" can be measured.
The self-fulfilling actions of airlines which tighten hand-flying restrictions after an incident must be examined and changed, especially for long-haul transport crews. Yet airlines are extremely reluctant to "waste all that automation they paid for" and implore crews to keep the autoflight engaged until late in the approach, taking over about thirty seconds before touchdown. Because of RNP restrictions and complex SIDs and STAR Profiles, hand-flying is not only discouraged but in some cases prohibited by airline policies given the speed and altitude accuracies demanded by these navigation procedures.
AF has run a FOQA/FDA/FDM Program for decades. This kind of program can pinpoint very easily and quickly, degradations in such standards. One sees this in a number of ways, but the character and nature of the approach and landing phase is the best area to examine.
Sidney Dekker has just put out another great book entitled, "
". "Drift towards failure" is discussed in the Woods article to which
alf5071h referred a few pages ago when referring to hindsight and hindsight bias. Dekker discusses hindsight and the phenomenon of hindsight bias. He discusses the "normalization of deviance", a notion and term which Vaughn created in her superb sociological study, "
", (
1996, University of Chicago). (Another superb work was hinted at by alf5071h in the same post, by Starbuck and Farjoun, (
, 2005, Blackwell, in which the Woods article now appears).
Dekker also contributes a succinct understanding and measure, by which the phenomenon of hindsight bias is made visible in our thinking and discussions: He writes in "
", (2006, Ashgate), "
What (you think) should have happened cannot explain people's behaviour."
How then, will the BEA Report address the issues made clear to us in the data and three years of discussion and examination?