Originally Posted by
Cool Guys
There are some seemly very experienced pilots here who post their opinions based on many hours flying with their bums in the pilot’s seat. You think they are just being reactionary and your not so humble opinion is based on “anecdotal incidences”
Not at all. To suggest an extreme hypothetical example, if you took a group of people who had years of experience driving a Ford Model T (which had a completely different pedal and gear layout to today's
de facto standard) and put them in a modern car, they would have difficulty operating it and would no doubt tell you that the modern car is inferior and less intuitive to operate than the Model T they are used to driving. And from their point of view that position would be absolutely true.
To bring that example closer to the subject at hand, another "crux" point in aviation, particularly in the US, was around the introduction of the Boeing 727 - which made jet operations out of smaller fields (and therefore previously the preserve of propliners) possible for the first time. There were quite a few nasty crashes early in the life of the B727 caused by crews bleeding off too much speed on the approach and not taking into account the extra time required for a jet engine to spool up and provide thrust compared to a prop-driven airliner. This did not mean that propliners were inherently safer - in fact within a decade or so it would become apparent that the introduction of the jet engine was one of the single most significant improvements to safety there had been in civil aviation, but it took time for the necessary changes in approach and attitude to "bed in".
Regarding Airbus, there's a whole political dimension to the subject which is mind-numbingly boring, but the overriding fact is that - just as before - after an initial period of getting used to the technology, the setup has been proven to work well, and as safely as any other setup currently flying.
Originally Posted by
roulishollandais
All the problems of automation and systems, decreasing safety statistics by scandalous accidents where pilots lost their airworthyness (AF447, Habsheim, Asiana, aso)
Oh, please -
NWA 6231 was more-or-less circumstantially identical to AF447, and pre-dated the introduction of civil FBW by 14 years. Habsheim was flown manually, and the Asiana accident had a whole slew of additional contributory factors.
in FBW are the result of the choice of regulators, airlines, and manufacturors to hire, select, train ignorant pilots
Rubbish. FBW refers to an electronic connection between the flight controls and flight surfaces - nothing more.
using less corporate test pilots and test engineers independant from private industry i.e.)
As I said before, Gordon Corps (chief pilot engineer on the A320 project and chief safety engineer) had been a certification pilot for the UK ARB (one of the most respected testing and certification bodies in the world) for around two decades prior to being hired by Airbus - it was that experience that they wanted. And they wanted him to make the product safe, not toe any company line.
and in engineering (former pilots made human teams with mecaniks and aircraft conceptors).
Which was exactly what Airbus did with their FBW line, and I'm sure Boeing did too.
That science was open, but today copying and counterfacts of systems have build a world of secrecy and paranoia which destroys spread of knowledge to pilots' community.
Again, rubbish. The block diagrams in Airbus FCOMs are at the same level of detail as those available to pilots and FEs of prior designs, if not more so.