A33Zab:
I remember this pamphlet. It had been dicussed ad nauseam.
Basically it turned out to be biased and sometimes outright silly.
1. The statement that flight crews learnt to appreciate the advantages of the system shows the bias. There is no proven advantage to take away tactile feedback. The crews simply got used to its absence and some even liked it (mostly the lesser gifted pilots ….) To claim that pilots appreciated non existing advantages mainly serves to cover up the fact that many disapproved of its apparent and admitted disadvantages. It’s like eternally reiterating that pilots were involved in the design, as to enhance its credibility. Most linepilots do not really think big of management- or factory-pilots, because they wear one hat too many.
2. Stating that control interconnection would increase chances of injury is silly. The conventional layout is still predominant in modern aviation and that would mean all other aircraft than Airbus would be exposed to such danger. As I said: Silly.
3. The most silly statement however is the following:
“Motion of the PNF sidestick can be distractive and in most circumstances can drive the attention away from the most important parameters or cues to be monitored”.
How about the movement of the conventional dual commands? What about the capability of humans to process visual and tactile inputs in parallel (as opposed to two visual inputs)?
Really no comment needed.
4. The argument that incorporating electronic interconnection would increase the chances of malfunction, due to increased complexity, is equally flawed. Why would we allow all the new gimmicks into our cockpits then? TCAS, EGPWS, Smart Landing System with all their interconnections, warnings and protections surely increase complexity. Just because every now and then one of these systems goes hayward was never cited or accepted as a reason not to implement them. Why should that now suddenly apply for a safety enhancement in flight controls?? That's a double standard.
PS @ Dozy: If you write your unavoidable spin to this, draft it to the community, no answer to me, I can no longer read your contributions.
Last edited by Gretchenfrage; 6th Jan 2013 at 05:40.