Originally Posted by
Gretchenfrage
You are so data and scientific-proof based, you should also be as pedantic as to what you state, read or interpret.
To be fair, I'm not - mercifully there have been so few accidents of this type in the last couple of decades that the numbers involved are so low as to make scientific statistical analysis practically impossible. All we can base it on is "anecdotal-plus".
If i said there was an "unexpected rise" in accidents with one design, that does not preclude that other accidents with older designs did not happen!
You didn't state that there was an unexpected rise in one design only, you said:
"a unexpected rise of accidents in airliners lately with loss of speed and subsequently loss of control"
implying the rise to be across all types.
The professional thing is to go and discuss why such a rise.
Well, you tell me - has there been a rise in LOCi accidents due to loss of speed, and if so, which ones?
A cursory glance at the aviation-safety database does not seem to indicate a greater number of LOCi accidents since the '90s, and certainly not that those with speed tape displays and non-moving thrust levers are more prone to them.
The puerile thing is to brush such questions aside by stating "... bah, the others did the same, so nothing can be wrong here."
Well, let's take a closer look.
Off the top of my head I can think of Birgenair 301, West Caribbean 708, Asiana 214 and Air France 447. The first two had round dials, the second pair had tape displays. A quick search also reveals Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 2553, which also had round dials - so despite being "unscientific" due to the paucity of data, these loss of control crashes due to poor speed management are currently standing at 3 round dials and 2 tape displays. Hardly a ringing endorsement.
Your own assertion that the transition from non-moving thrust levers to the moving type was a causal factor (and thus that the moving type is inherently better) in Asiana 214 ignores that only one of the pilots on that flight deck was converting from a FBW Airbus - there should have been at least two pairs of eyes capable of making the distinction even if your assertion were true. And as I said, there's Turkish 1951 in which none of the pilots were recent converts from Airbus FBW types.
With all due respect, I think it's pretty bizarre that with an accident that happened to a Boeing FBW type and in which Airbus had no part, you're still capable of finding a way of holding Airbus technology (in this case passive thrust levers) partially responsible.
Of course, you're welcome to your opinion and I'd never presume to state otherwise. But I must admit that I find this "traditionalist" view a bit obtuse, and the "you're not a pilot"
ad hominem more than a little insulting. Yeah, I'm not a pilot, but if you think that means I'm not well aware of how technological changes and consequent changes in interfaces affect the work I do, then you're very much mistaken.
Using my profession (Software Engineering), my 14 years of professional experience and 10 years of personal experience before that as an analogy, I've gone from pure text-based interfaces, through early graphical interfaces up to modern graphical interfaces (which themselves seem to be rearranged every few years). And yes, each change is initially a real PITA and I spend a fair amount of time cursing the changes and those responsible for them before getting used to them.
Furthermore, if you ask me about it, I'll swear up-and-down that the best interface I know belonged to an OS and a machine that has been obsolete since the mid-90s - and I will be very vociferous about it! But the truth is that I keep one of those machines around for old times' sake and while light-years ahead of its time, the lack of more modern features that I am now used to actually makes the experience more frustrating in terms of actually getting stuff done than the warm fuzzies I get from wearing that familiar old "coat" again.
Anyhoo - enough of the analogy itself. The point is that as humans we're all hard-wired with a tendency to prefer the surroundings we learned on and "grew up with". But, referring back to my analogy, one hard-won lesson I've learned in my professional life is that kvetching about the old ways I miss never got me anywhere. What did get me somewhere was realising that once I understood the core concepts (which have never fundamentally altered much from the very beginning), it was possible to adapt much more easily to any changes that came along, and I believe this is analogous to the example of the airspeed displays.
Whether you're using the angle of an old analogue pointer to closely monitor small changes in acceleration/deceleration, or whether you're using the red bars and bugs on the tape display to do the same, the truth is that adapting between them is not that hard if you're willing to try, because the fundamentals are the same. It may be annoying and you may prefer the older method, but that does not, in and of itself, make it better.