aterpster, BOAC;
Re "the new airmanship" - it's why I wrote
this only-slightly-off-topic comment in the AF447 Thread #9.
Having someone or something other than oneself do one's thinking and one's work in place of one, results in losing one's ability to do such thinking and such work. The discussion and the many solutions posited to counter such effects begins at a point
after one has accepted someone or something else's notion of what to do and why. The discussion thus becomes lost in details of this or that untoward single outcome, be it a medical, aviation, nuclear, architectural or economical "accident" as in the structural failures leading up to October, 2008.
Some say,
Technology-'R'-Us, rather than the other way around. That doesn't mean we eschew such brilliant technical developments; without even any debate we know our technologies make life longer, better and safer, and those are values our society holds.
The enchantment, mainly on the part of owners/managers but not line crews, with the subtstantial benefits of computer automation is justified primarily through economical metrics especially in financially-challenging times, with vague notions of "safety" bringing up the hindmost. Automation was an economic solution, not an operational one.
But the effect of
not doing something for a long period of time (physically or mentally) is that of losing one's edge, one's way of thinking and and one's habits.
That has long since become a vicious circle because the traditional goals of "standards, training and checking", the ones that a host of old guys from this and other professions who know "old airmanship", (and "old medicine", "old engineering", etc), have shifted towards skills and thinking in operating automation itself, and not the old-fashioned skills required in actually operating the system, (or machine, etc).
Knowing one's altitude and distance while on an approach is a basic skill which has been marginalized by FMS systems and CRT displays. I recall flying a DC9 in a fleet that had only one DME because the company was too cheap to put in the second DME on the F/O's side. One ALWAYS knew where one was on the approach because it took work and a solid engagement with the airplane and its constantly-changing situation to do so.
Was it less safe? Of course it was, compared to present capabilities and displays. So why do we see crews today continue an ILS approach with all the information available to them including an accurate, detailed, scaled map display showing exactly where the airport is, the FAF is and even the required crossing altitudes for the FAF, etc?
Ninety-nine percent of the time it isn't a problem and a successful if not transparent shift in thinking has taken place and one just carries on. But where accidents occur, the question can't be answered in traditional ways. Recognition that a fundamental shift in cognitive behaviour is required to work and perform successfully in highly-technical systems is needed first, before solutions, primarily for training and checking, emerge.
PJ2