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That's definitely a mischaracterization of what the airlines do. Anyone that has been in a cockpit of a plane knows that you fly by checklists. There's a check

That's definitely a mischaracterization of what the airlines do. Anyone that has been in a cockpit of a plane knows that you fly by checklists. There's a checklist procedure for almost any scenario they will run into (of course not every). This exact issue was seen by other airlines and the pilots followed the checklist procedures to safely regain control of the plane as expected. In theory, these checklists are optimized to resolve these issues and regain control as quickly as possible while ruling out other causes. It is very rare the correct course of action for the pilot differs from the checklist procedure. There is 0 expectation that the pilot should remember everything. Pilots are trained specifically to communicate with each other to go through these checklists as quickly as possible. That being said, there is a major concern that this issue will popup while taking off and being too low to the ground to properly follow procedure in time to recover control of the aircraft.

ReptileMan 8y ago
The problem is information overload to pilots. And the pipeline how commercial pilots are trained also changed. 50 years ago a lot of pilots were having military backgrounds and training. So they were having more experience with shit going down the drain situations.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  50 years ago they also crashed about 100 times as often as today. (Air Traffic increased ten-fold since 1970, while fatalities went from 3,500 pa to a few hundred)
Brakenshire 8y ago
I mean, initially pilots were not informed this system existed. Certainly the assumptions that went into that decision seem to match up with what the person above you is describing.
- ConceitedCode 8y ago
  In theory (not saying I agree), the "regain control checklist" is very similar before and after this change which is apart of why they did not see a need to communicate this until after the 1st crash. Reviewing the video below - it appears to still line up with this. He doesn't mention the actual memory items changing. His explanation is the pilots starting using the wrong memory items because of information overload. Example - They could have been going through the stall memory items instead of the runaway vertical stabilizer memory items.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    That appears to be contradicted in this video which was linked above, around the 8:45 minute mark, it's a different set of memory items ("Runaway stabilizer") which should be enacted in the case this system was coming into force outside of a stall situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus
linuxftw 8y ago
Chicken and egg problem. How does the pilot know that the automation is malfunctioning? The pilot has to go through their mental checklist and make the realization that intervention is necessary to prevent catastrophic results. All this while in critical take-off situation. Apparently, the plane thought all was well, just needed to point the nose of the plane down a wee bit.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jimmy1 8y ago
And yet it is precisely because Captain Sullenberger did not follow protocol, in the moment, that he was able to save the lives of everyone aboard flight 1549. It was only determined afterwards (obviously) that he made the right call.
- 7952 8y ago
  Many pilots in similar situations would have made the wrong decision. As a passenger you are not necessarily going to get someone of Sullenberger's quality. And it is possible that automation could help in this kind of situation. It could provide an estimate of glide distance. It could use spatial data to identify crash landing sites, avoid populated areas, and design an optimal landing profile. All in a fraction of a second. Of course this kind of failure is so unusual that it is probably not worth designing the automation to deal with it.

ReptileMan 8y ago

The problem is information overload to pilots. And the pipeline how commercial pilots are trained also changed. 50 years ago a lot of pilots were having military backgrounds and training. So they were having more experience with shit going down the drain situations.

shaki-dora 8y ago
50 years ago they also crashed about 100 times as often as today. (Air Traffic increased ten-fold since 1970, while fatalities went from 3,500 pa to a few hundred)

Brakenshire 8y ago

I mean, initially pilots were not informed this system existed. Certainly the assumptions that went into that decision seem to match up with what the person above you is describing.

ConceitedCode 8y ago
In theory (not saying I agree), the "regain control checklist" is very similar before and after this change which is apart of why they did not see a need to communicate this until after the 1st crash. Reviewing the video below - it appears to still line up with this. He doesn't mention the actual memory items changing. His explanation is the pilots starting using the wrong memory items because of information overload. Example - They could have been going through the stall memory items instead of the runaway vertical stabilizer memory items.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  That appears to be contradicted in this video which was linked above, around the 8:45 minute mark, it's a different set of memory items ("Runaway stabilizer") which should be enacted in the case this system was coming into force outside of a stall situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus

linuxftw 8y ago

Chicken and egg problem. How does the pilot know that the automation is malfunctioning? The pilot has to go through their mental checklist and make the realization that intervention is necessary to prevent catastrophic results. All this while in critical take-off situation. Apparently, the plane thought all was well, just needed to point the nose of the plane down a wee bit.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jimmy1 8y ago

And yet it is precisely because Captain Sullenberger did not follow protocol, in the moment, that he was able to save the lives of everyone aboard flight 1549. It was only determined afterwards (obviously) that he made the right call.

7952 8y ago
Many pilots in similar situations would have made the wrong decision. As a passenger you are not necessarily going to get someone of Sullenberger's quality. And it is possible that automation could help in this kind of situation. It could provide an estimate of glide distance. It could use spatial data to identify crash landing sites, avoid populated areas, and design an optimal landing profile. All in a fraction of a second. Of course this kind of failure is so unusual that it is probably not worth designing the automation to deal with it.