Originally Posted by
pickleford
If the plane doesn't do what I want it to do, I make it do so. If it's not responding, I make it respond," Insler said vehemently. "There is plenty of feedback as to how this airplane flies, more than enough inputs and opportunity to recover.
I would be very happy if Insler was flying my plane, he has taken responsibility in his life. But how many pilots today are just xbox players ? Isn't that the goal of the manufacturers to cheaper pilot costs and training and so on. They are not really encouraged to know what is going on, it's all a game. In this case a pilot might have said : "well if I wish to completely disable computation then I must also disabled STS". Which would have also disabled the new undocumented system .... working on first principles. But pilots just follow the training with no independent thoughts. Independent thought is expensive to train.
Anyway I think it is somewhat beyond this society to change course on its automation cheapening staff fanaticism, and so we need to be practical. Giving pilots access to all the AoA indicators onthe aircraft, their raw data (there are 4 I believe on the 737, 2 are on the wings) ... that would be good. And then having the concept of disabling all the computational inputs and knowing how to do that in 3 seconds flat ... which I am sure will arrive giving this accident. Also having a 3rd AoA tube outside would be good; if you have 2 and 1 fails ... that's not so much helpful when on instruments !
These 2 measures are cheap and idiot proof solutions.
btw are there any other control systems on 737 that need disabling ? Anything else ? Because pilots seem to only disabled the autopilot and navigation in the first instance.