"In either case, wouldn't continued wrestling with the the controls suggest a bigger issue than how the logic works?"
Yes, an issue that would be readily known by both pilots, in yoke equipped a/c.
Rather than unknown, and problematic, with SS's? This is the fundamental problem with SS, as interpreted in Airbus a/c, that both pilots can happily input commands, that are followed by the a/c, without knowing the other's actions..... Schizophrenegenic.
The corollary for SS would be that they are connected directly, such that each pilot would know what the commands are, and that they in fact emanate from his/her oppo. One stick could not move independently of its second/other. This is immediate and non verbal, which is currently non existent in the platform.
What's he/she doing?
Opendoor, I think I see a rationale behind summing / averaging the inputs by two SS: avoid potential over controlling (and possible damage) to the aircraft if the two pilots are both trying to make an input at the same time. LW50.
A rationale? Made necessary by something that should be impossible in the first place: Dual Control? A third and synthetic solution to a problem created out of mistakes made by two disconnected pilots? It is a palliative, made necessary by shortcomings of the design in the first place? Airbus makes a serious mistake in the very creation of the problem: they dilute and make a nonsense of what for a century has been critical to safe flight, in the interest of doing something merely different. that something? COMMAND. One pilot at a time. In making the pilots role secondary, they have fallen too far into the trap set by their own automation, to wit: an airplane cannot fly two ways at once. Offering a summed and synthetic solution to a confusion is not dangerous? I say it can be, and 447 demonstrates that one confused pilot can frustrate the mere possibility of salvation by two others in pursuing the path Airbus set: two separate control stations, with a computer that tries to resolve both inputs, when one is decidedly wrong.
A correct result cannot come from a computer that bases its own solution on two others, one of which is false.
Last edited by Lyman; 14th Jul 2012 at 19:17.