I was watching a program on pay T.V the other day called Wings, it was documenting an Air Candada flight from Toronto to Frankfurt. They had interviews with the Capt. and F/O, they were showing their point of view on how much aviation will change in the next 30 years or so. NASA at the moment is testing a new program in which makes ATC have the same dials and instruments as what the aircraft in the sky have, which will allow more aircraft in the sky at any one time. The more aircraft we have in the sky the less room we have for pilot error so adversly we will see computers take over the role of a traditional pilot.
Pilots in aircraft such as the 400 series jumbo and other advanced airliners consider themselves more as managers then a hands on pilot.
I believe the technology in aircraft at the moment will lead us well into the century, as the majority of the new technology has just started to take over the old anologue type cockpits, fair enough EFIS has been around for about 20 years now but not all aircraft have adopted it. I think it will be about another 20 years before we see another sort of major instrumentation change.
If we have airliners flying at altitudes high enough to skip over the earths atmosphere I think then that we have to have computers doing most of the thinking for us, as we would have to be some sort of super human to keep up with it. For instance on approach what do you think the approach speed is it could be as fast as 400 knots and I dont think any pilot could carry out his or her checks and land that aircraft saftley without the assistance of a computer or the computer doing it soley by itself.
Regards, Wowie
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if your gonna die, die in a kingswood
[This message has been edited by wowie (edited 05 July 2001).]