Hey gums,
Originally Posted by
gums
If you are forced to fly a "crew" jet with dual controls, then having the visual and mechanical duplication of control stick/wheel is one addition to "awareness".
Agreed. However, looking dispassionately at recent civil aviation history it can be argued that said addition is of limited benefit in a two-crew airliner scenario.
CONF is right when he says that the non-linked controls do not allow for "follow-through" in the training scenario, and he's also right when he says this makes the FBW Airbus require a very strict interpretation of when a pilot transfers to line training in that he or she must be consistently competent in terms of handling the aircraft before being signed off for the line. However, if I understand modern airline ops, then that prerequisite is mandatory even with conventionally-controlled types. I suspect that if, say, a landing was performed in which a follow-through became necessary, then both the training Captain and trainee would be summoned for tea and biscuits, with the former being required to explain why they let the trainee proceed to that point.
As we're both painfully aware, a recurring theme in the AF447 discussion was the argument that if the controls were connected, the PNF would have been able to see the errors made by the PF and taken control. This is countered by the fact that the same scenario has cropped up several times on types with conventional controls - and the PNF either did not see what the yoke was doing or ignored it, resulting in a crash.
The implementation of such systems will be more complex than what the 'bus has, or the Shuttle or the Viper that I flew. Nevertheless, I can appreciate the added awareness factor.
Well, the T7 and 787 have FBW implementations with software-driven force-feedback, and yes - both systems are way more complex than that of the Airbus FBW types. But there are already differences in how the systems in the two aircraft operate vis. commanding rate vs. deflection - such differences would be anathema to Airbus's original goal of having the whole family of aircraft behave as close to identically handling-wise as possible.
I suspect that all of this would have been a non-issue had the subject not acquired a political dimension early on. The idea that the transition to sidesticks was a physical embodiment of the reduced role of the human pilot and increase in automation seems to be as widespread as it is inaccurate. The sidestick concept was being tested on a Concorde airframe years before the launch of the B757/767, which was when digital FMS became truly mainstream. We might have even seen sidesticks as an option on the T7 had United, the launch customer, not vetoed it.
All that being said, I still have a problem with several accidents where basic airmanship played a larger role than mechanically connected controls
Indeed - and truth be told there has not as yet been a single accident in which connected controls could definitively and provably made a difference.