Human-Centred Design

[Sheep Guts]

Very good reply Nozzles.

The new technology today is suppose to give feedback to the Pilot of what he or she is doing , and so it should. But parts of the new flyby wire design have a few loop holes, that their predecessors can handle alot better.

One of them comes to mind, after an occurence when a 767 ran out of fuel over North America. Gashtly as it sounds this story has a happy ending. The Pilot ran out oi fuel and in short glided the Aircraft to land on a smaller Aerdrome called "Gimly Filed". In doing so, the Pilot had to side Slip the Aircraft to get into the small airstrip. Which he did with no problems. He was an accomplished Glider in his off time. The 767 is not a Flyby wire Aircraft, and hence it responded normally to such unormal control inputs.

This puts the question, can a flyby wire Aircraft perform similarly with these type of inputs. I have asked a few Pilots now of Aibuses and alike about this, and they all say that the control inputs would be read as cross control inputs and not respond. If this is the case,( I stand to be corrected) then one would think that these Aircraft in such unusual flight configerations would suffer. My criticism not only comes from this incident, but many other incidents and accidents. The St Louis DC-10 where the No2. Engine failed and all of the Hydraulic lines were severed. Resulting in the Crew members juggling power levers to accomplish a crash landing and saving half the passengers. If this occurred in a FlyBy wire Aircraft what then?
By the way, the St Louis accident scenario was practised with 100 odd crews in a sim, and they all crashed.

Then a positive from this. When I was a Tech in the RAAF in Tindal Australia. Our 75SQN CO at the time persihed in a Hornet "God Rest His Soul". It was the resultant of a Midair Collision. The other Aircraft another Hornet had nearly half of its wing clipped off in the collision. The onboard systems compensated for the loss of control and the Pilot managed to Return to Base with problem. This shows that Flybywire systems can be inherently safer aswell.

Our removal from the basics and consequences of our actions in controling a Large Jet, through Flyby wire systems has both pros and cons. The pros being the New Generation Pilots with their Computer Simulator skills would definitely adapt to these new technologies, and cons being, would they be able to cope with complications arising lack of practical experience.

Hey maybe Im just bantering

Regards
sheep