Tourist;
Humans are almost exactly what you don't want in a modern cockpit.
= Humans are what YOU don't want in a cockpit you mean.
Airline flying is dull and repetitive.
= Says who? No it isn't
All the good SOP stuff can't avoid the fact that we have rarely even met the other guy.
= What has that got to do with anything? Do you understand what SOP's are for?
A modern airliner is spectacularly complex.
= Yes, but not to operate
Machines don't get tired.
They don't need practise
The love dull
They care not about unsociable.
They don't need to rehearse.
They excel at complex concurrent tasks
= Machines can go wrong. Power supplies overheat, bad connections occur, fuses or breakers pop. Processors can become overloaded, causing lock ups or resets. Valves can jam. Programmers cannot consider every eventuallity.
I say again.....
The first point I will make yet again.......
= You don't have to keep saying again. The reason your points are being ignored is that you're making stupid assertions.
In an Airbus, nearly everything is solved by "leave it alone, it's just having a bad morning" or off then on.
= Rubbish
The third of course is why are you judging the future on a really old piece of archaic junk like an Airbus?
= Archaic junk? Ridiculous assertion. You really don't like Airbus do you? What happened, did you fail your SIM?
Glueball
Read back a few pages.
There is a strong suggestion that the river was not the best option. If that is the case, that is the sort of thing a computer is good at judging. It is just a matter of geometry and speed distance time glide angle calculations. That is where a computer has us totally beaten.
= What about garbage in garbage out?
Uplinker.
I don't think you have thought this through.
What do you do in an engine/generator/gear failure/flap jam failure that involves thought? You follow the ECAM. You are not supposed to think. All you currently are is an error waiting to happen as you don't follow the instruction properly or most likely you make a tiny error in the landing distance chart and totally mess up.
The ECAM tells you what to do.
You do it. well done, you must be a pilot.
= Thank you. Yes I am, and what rubbish you speak. "Not supposed to think" Where on earth did you get that from?
Here are a few of the considerations that I and the other pilot will be making as we are following the ECAM:-
Where is the high ground?
How much fuel have we got?
What is our endurance?
Is a fuel imbalance building up? If so, why?
Where are the CB's ?
Do we have any icing?
What stopping systems have we lost?
What landing distance do we require?
What landing distance is available?
Have we lost any landing capability, e.g autoland?
What is the weather situation at our destination and alternates?
Do all our slats and flaps work?
Will the landing gear deploy - What if it doesn't?
Will our noeswheel steering work? If not, how are we going to control the roll out?
When we land, will we need to evacuate the aircraft on the runway? If so, we need to brief the Cabin crew and the passengers.
By the way. Don't be scared of the ECAM. Folk seem to think it has a mythical intelligence. It is an electronic checklist. It is programmed to present the appropriate checklist(s) in an appropriate order. End of. It doesn't think. It is not intelligent.
Rather than computerise the decision making process, why don't we make sure that the human element has as much information and assistance as possible? The best working conditions, the best training, sufficient rest etc. etc. Why is anyone trying to remove pilots from the cockpit?
Last edited by Uplinker; 7th Dec 2014 at 10:25.