Originally Posted by
SadPole
1. We are fooling ourselves that human beings are capable of logical reasoning, especially when it comes to split-second decisions in a stressful situation.
Actually, experience suggests that some are and some aren't. The problem is that it is very difficult to tell which person will fall into which category until it actually happens.
A kid who practiced for say an hour a day for a few weeks on a toy simulator on some game station would most likely have a better instinctive reaction to the stall warning than the hero of our story did.
Speculation with no supporting evidence. There's a *massive* difference between experiencing the sequence in the sim versus doing it for real (especially when doing it for real involves a body clock expecting circadian rhythms). Also, the chances of making a successful recovery hinge on being prepared - I hadn't touched the controls of an aircraft since I last climbed out of a Chipmunk trainer in 1993, yet managed to recover an A320 sim with the AF447 conditions programmed. This doesn't make me a pilot - my advantage was entirely because I knew what to expect.
4. It is absolutely true that a true ace pilot, one that committed his whole life to aviation, could NOT be affected by even most illogical configuration of plane controls. Even if someone/something all of a sudden re-wired the whole damn sidestick backwards, a guy like that would figure it out in a few seconds, because he committed his whole life into merging his mind and body with every flying device he could put his hands on.
Then please explain why there are at least five dead astronauts and cosmonauts who were lost in training accidents. No matter how good you are, sometimes it's just not your day.
With all due respect, I find your use of "aces/wolves" versus "vegetables" not only insulting but incredibly distasteful. It's a lot more complicated than that.
8. If you think vegatable pilots are bad, imagine vegetable engineers, people who never had any desire to create new things, and are perfectly happy to do little besides playing office politics. Yes – the corporate engineering is full of those...
Not when developing new products in aviation you don't.
9. I have never worked for Airbus, so I don't know how bad (or good) things are over there. But the companies I worked for, the things that I have seen made my skin crawl.
...
Generally, one vegetable engineer, most likely the boss's top ass-kisser would come up with the idea in order to promote his position, then convince everyone that that's what the boss wanted. Then everyone goes along and does not dare to question things. Not daring becomes its own logic and so it goes.
Were any of those companies in the aviation business? I've worked on many software projects, running the gamut between being brilliantly run and managed and being a complete train-wreck, but I don't think the latter methodology would wash in a top-drawer aviation engineering department. Airline management is another story, and PJ2 absolutely filleted some of the more modern practices in a post on the other thread.
As for Airbus, my old Software Engineering Prof (RIP) - who was a dyed-in-the-wool FBW sceptic - visited Toulouse in 1994 and came away impressed. Mind you, he still held their feet to the fire in public...