Time for a bit of "In Your Face" Technology
When abstract and abstruse technology runs amok, it needs to be immediately apparent to a flight crew that anything (or everything?) in technoville is becoming unstuck.... or even just on its way out. Fortunately there is (prospectively) a digital way to do that - to "in your face" alert the crew of an imminent GIGO fiasco (GIGO = garbage in/ Garbage out). But more on that in a moment.....
Firstly it always helps to have the captain on the flight deck when faced with the need to intervene manually or interpret some confusing happenstance. It also tends to offload the cruise captain/F.O. and his oppo of the need to resolve any differences of opinion about what to do next. Solution? A klaxon in the captain's crew rest area would tend to galvanize el capitano into instant action. His prompt appearance on the flight deck would serve to defuse the always prevailing angst and uncertainty about actually making an assertive decision - possibly one that properly lies solely in the province of command. Acting resolutely and taking the initiative is laudable when success is the outcome. However when it isn't, it can often be career-shattering. Such is the nature of Monday morning quarter-backing aided by 20:20 hindsight. The fluster factor quotient in a two F/O cruise crew is the facade that lurks. Sudden exposure to an AF447 like scenario can freeze-frame cross-cockpit communications and comprehension. You need a licenced decision-maker on scene. That's what command is all about.
I honestly don't know how a captain can achieve slumber in any situation where two underlings are left to their own devices. It's not about trust, it's more about insecurity. I can recall springing out of an aft bunk and dashing to the flight-station in an Orion because my wakening nightmare had been that we were spinning into the ocean a few thousand feet below. The fact that we were asymmetric and hanging off the three props at endurance speed had a lot to do with my subconscious mindset. We were loiter surveilling a yacht full of drugs enroute to some unknown landfall. Of course, when I burst into the cockpit nothing was happening, yet I've relived that nightmare quite a few times.
So, what to do when the autopilot disconnects suddenly and the beast requires someone to instantly grab the reins? It's never totally apparent WTF is actually happening - what's trustworthy? what's possibly erroneous? what's the state of our automation modality? what's clearly failed? and most importantly, where to next with the trouble-shooting checklist? - particularly when the failure is epicentric and tentacular. The omnibus checklist series that covers all contingencies is yet to be written. Even if it was "to hand", it's never going to just flop open at the page you want. A noisome background of alarms and a panel covered with non-specific warnings serves only to alarm - the alert has already happened.
Failure of a pitot feed or an AoA vane are two exemplars that spring to mind. Reflect upon the accident to 5Y-BEN, an A310 that dropped into the ocean just off the end of the runway at Abidjan. There'd been prior instances elsewhere of the same nasty affliction that that flight-crew faced, a stick-shaker after take-off that just wouldn't stop - and a crew that responded
"properly" by unloading to avoid an imminent stall - but unfortunately terminating their trouble-shooting at sea-level. It appears that some ramp-rash to the AoA vane on the tarmac had gone unreported and went unnoticed on the walk-around.... so the stick-shaker was bogus. But whatever the cause, it's always the instantly apparent "cure" that's linked to a happy outcome.
Statistically, a perplexed crew is around 50% unlikely to come up with a workable solution when suddenly faced with "the unstraightforward". What to do about that?
One of the happier and fortunate aspects of our digitalis era is the ability to include self-check and to clearly report any discrepancies with specificity. BITE (built-in test equipment checks) has been around for decades, but it's normally restricted to a confession to a master warning system that it's not feeling "up to snuff" - and the alert that's forthcoming is always/usually preflight (only) or if inflight, too abstract for direct intervention. It needs time-consuming troubleshooting to some extent. That's where an "in your face" alerts system could step in to fill that conceptual breach. There's nothing like clarity in failure - to point the way forward. An FAQ reference is just not an option once that 4th dimension (time) is in play.
The evident need is always to minimize trouble-shooting. Just saying "aviate, navigate, communicate" is no salve for system self-expression in automation. Automation to date has been designed to alleviate the normal workload. Its next generation and obvious development challenge is to relieve the abnormal workload.
Rather than just "blacking out", it would (IMHO) be infinitely better for a suddenly unreliable instrument or screen to either:
a. show on its face a clear exposition of its failure status (or of faulty input data being out of limits).. or...
b. simply show vertical or horizontal raster (think of the older analogue screens with a faulty vertical hold) - i.e. its "out of action" status.
Just flickering or failing to zero or displaying a false reading or even an unobvious non-annunciating OFF flag is wholly unacceptable - but that's exactly where we are "at" now.
Some failures just lead to a querulous FAQ of WTF (aka: "what's it doing now?"). Some indicators (such as airspeed tape displays instead of round gauges) are just not attention-getting enough.
Digital has always been an infinite resource for safer flight. Its exploitation needs to now include some deeper systemic introspection and a non-misleading advisory capacity. Silently changing flight modes is an insidious deception. Low-side stall warning re-triggers on an attempted exit from a deep-stall condition? There's nothing simplex about that. It's a duplicitous behaviour..... and one that befuddles any human thought process.
Developments in avionics systems now needs to concentrate upon
the human interface. A last-ditch fallback to manual flight is necessary. But it seems to be more akin to falling backwards into a cold pool of uncertainty surrounded by undefined but obviously present further failure-threats. A clean-break reversion to a manual flight mode whose parameters and limits are familiar? That's the way to go.