Thanks Jayhawk....Much as I suspected. I'm assuming still not really justified on weather
and cost statistics for most general civil aviation in the US.
So it appears that the day has yet to dawn, when the basic handling skills of pilots may
be overlooked in favour of zippy avionics fed by multiple channels of purified wiggly amps
and human fast-track typists.
Much as Airline management and nervous passengers crave reassurance that computers will take
the risks out of flying, companies are, for the time being, still going to have source individuals who can
soak up the basic elements of applied aerodynamics; cope with simple mental arithmetic, and stay
awake in the dark.
As a lad on Britannias, we had 'Ultra' electric throttles.......no Auto Alpha Floor protection there, but if
you frightened the Flight Engineer, he'd hit you with the tech log....That seemed to work..
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1959/1959%20-%203388.html
(We could also select an auto-coupled ADF approach - as in outer marker NDB. Not many VORs around then.
Never knew any body that tried it out though.....)
The power lever was a sort of rheostat connected to an amplifier.....
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1964/1964%20-%202325.html
Never went wrong in the four years that I knew it, but if you lost all the electrics, you couldn't shut the engines down.
(I suppose if you were in the air, you wouldn't want to.)