Originally Posted by
unworry
@IanW @andianjul and others
This isn't a software logic/coding issue but one of system design.
There are two primary actors, the automated flight computers and human pilots, who have varying control of the flight. A critical factor in the handling of these upsets seems to depend on the nature of the failover/hand-off (here, catch) to the crew.
I know its mainly about risk mitigation (stall/over-speed avoidance) but once such an incident has occurred, it appears the system as a whole is inherently vulnerable, exacerbated by deficiency in training, crew awareness and identification of the problem, their response and computer assistance in alternate configurations.
So is this just the way it is nowadays? Take all precautions to avoid an upset, then ... good luck?
I think that you are
understating the problems.
The approach to training and operational flight now is that flight crew are positively discouraged from manual flight at cruise levels. The psychological impact of just taking control of the aircraft and 'manually' flying it rather than leaving it to the AP is considerable for some flight crew. They may have thousands of hours in the cockpit but almost no time at all manually flying at cruise. No amount of time in a nice safe simulator will provide the mental effect of flying the real thing manually at height. So just having the AP give control to the flight crew (for some crews) is sufficient stress and some may not cope too well.
The problem is that the AP normally calls it a day, when something is going wrong and the aircraft has distinct problems. So not only are the crews already stressed due to just having control, they also have the added alerts and problems to sort together with the 'calming' alarms, alerts, scrolling warnings on ECAM and barber poles changing colors etc. Perhaps even losing the standard instruments.
This mix of beancounters wanting efficient flight chasing crews who hand fly, lack of any hands-on training/practice in cruise and 'graceful degradation' of the systems increasing system complexity and the number of 'what is it doing now' questions all added to an inflight emergency, is a recipe for guaranteed failures.
It seems we are starting to see some of these failures; the industry is going to need to respond constructively to block these holes in the cheese. Don't hold your breath though as the first reaction appears to be to deny the problem - a management version of automation surprise.