Originally Posted by
Herod
There is always a lot of talk about loss of flying skills. Yes, the accountants like to see automatic flight where possible, since it saves money. However, automatics should be considered aids. Maybe airlines should encourage manual flight below, say, 1000' in good conditions. In this case, had PF been using manual control, including manual throttle, might this have been prevented? Caveat: I last flew an airliner in 2004.
It is actually a little worse than that. The certification of many of the automatics is based on them being considered 'aids'/'support tools'. This makes their testing and certification easier because failure modes can be expected to be dealt with by the flight crew. So the software is built with a design that when things get too difficult (the otherwise case ) it hands the decision to the crew as a bag of bolts for the sky-gods to take over.
Thanks to the actions of the beancounters the and senior pilot/managers that scrutinize FOQA and the SOP writers, the 'aids' and their 'advice' are required to be treated as infallible. But they were not designed to be perfect they are intended to assist and reduce workload.
This is a major systems analysis failure by the designers and a missed 'cheese hole' by the regulators.
Also, IFF, the systems are not for sky-gods but instead are designed to be perfect and not fail as the current senior pilots/managers/beancounters wish them to be; then there is no need for sky-gods, indeed no need for even cruise-pilots - as the 'automatics' now do it all themselves and do not have an otherwise case. That is where the attitude always follow the automatics, always obey RAAS, always use TOGA, always follow SOPs is leading. The day is not far off where even remote pilots will be unnecessary - because of the attitude to automation, exhibited by suing a manufacturer because the crew treated advice as an edict and were unable to carry out a simple go-around without the assistance of automatics that were limited in their operation to cope with possible crew error,
without that limitation on TOGA to avoid human error the automatics would have worked alone RAAS could have triggered TOGA and the FMS fly the aircraft.
I (unfortunately) can remember when elevators all had operators, when trains always had drivers and when there were no automated cars. This court action will hasten the demise of the job of pilot.
(And before anyone asks - yes I would fly in an unpiloted aircraft - the one I am in is currently on full automatic operation over the East Atlantic and the automatics will be in control until a few hundred feet on finals in Atlanta, and that could easily become an autoland.)