Autopilot babies and paint-by-numbers piloting are not new ideas. Back in 1942 a Marine Corps Major wrote about it. People were calling anything past a gentle bank a stunt. We needed pilots to know the full envelope of flight then — and now. You can’t learn this type of flying out of textbooks … It seems rather silly to be …
Tag: automation
Fully Automatic?
Guess what year this newspaper article was published: 1946? 1976? 1996? 2016? Answer: Rain, Fog, Snow! Future Airliner to Go Right Thru: Automatic Devices Will Handle It. Chicago Daily Tribune. 6 June 1946. Yep! 1946. And the next year Time magazine reported on a military aircraft flying from Newfoundland to England under the control of an autopilot programmed on punched …
Your Job Is
“If you want to fly as [traditional pilots] say they do, then go fly gliders, become test pilots, for all I care go to the moon. But flying for the airlines is not supposed to be an adventure. From takeoff to landing, the autopilots handle the controls. This is routine. In a Boeing as much as an Airbus. And they …
The Problem with Pilots
Finished reading an amazing book that was published last year— The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight, by former USAF U2 instructor pilot and dean of their school of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Colonel Timothy P. Schultz, PhD. It covers the history of automation in aircraft, the replacement and extension of piloting skills into …
The Capability of the Human Pilot
The North American X-15 was a hypersonic rocket-powered experimental aircraft flown by the USAF and NASA in the 1960’s. The X-15 holds the official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a manned aircraft, set in October 1967 when test pilot William J. Knight at 102,100 feet flew Mach 6.70. Clearly it was a hot rod rocket ride, and obviously important to the advancement of high …
Isn’t It Ironic, Don’t You Think
Thirty-five years ago a paper was presented at a conference, titled Ironies of Automation, by Lisanne Bainbridge. It included many insightful ideas: The designer’s view of the human operator may be that the operator is unreliable and inefficient… so should be eliminated from the system. There are two ironies of this attitude. One is that designer errors can be a …
With the Automagic off, are You Confident?
With autopilot, autothrottles, flight directors, GPS off — are you practised enough? Really ready? Comfortable? Many experts aren’t sure we are. The accident data is worrying. One test-pilot and astronaut with 60-years of flying experience has spoken out about the adverse side effects of automation. He’s noted that Apollo astronauts practised every procedure with and without automation. “We felt comfortable in …
Active Monitoring
How do we monitor autopilots better? How do we stop just sitting and sorta watching the magic show? A major US airline training slide says ‘Active Monitoring’ works by: Visualizing the outcome. Acting to achieve the desired result. & Comparing expectations to reality. Look FOR something, not just AT something. I think they’re on to something. Monitoring …
Basic Appliances
This Calvin cartoon is from 1992. I don’t think modern computers and 25 years of human factors research have changed the punch line. Thank goodness for skilled pilots!
Fighting Complacency
Fighting complacency is not as exciting as fighting fires, but it’s a battle we will join many more times. We train for engine failures, electrical loss, and lots more. And we should practice multiple worst case failures. But we must also learn to handle ourselves on all those flights when nothing is going on. (Quote is from Coelho’s 2008 novel …