It is clear to me, there is a basic disconnect by designers/engineering/manufacturing, with the art of flying. Automation is supposed to augment or replace hand-flying. To accomplish that, the design team has to clearly understand flying. Not only from the basic lift/thrust/drag/gravity, but how an airplane feels when flying in all regimes of flight. Likewise, when pilots are largely depending on the automation to bear the heaviest burden of the flight from gear up to short final, it is not hard to understand the loss of hand-flying skills. Throw in the cost matrix of both certification for the manufacturer and hand-flying time expense to the airline, we have created the perfect storm of “who’s flying the airplane”.
Where does automation start/end and where does hand-flying start/end? And who or what should be intervening when either the automation or hand-flying skills go south? And what do you do when both systems are failing at the same time?
I have always believed that in both crashes, the crews were doing everything they could to save the airplane. I have always believed they were well trained. So far, the data from both crashes have demonstrated both crews were facing significant conflicting information and initially did exactly what Boeing said needed to be done, in the order Boeing had dictated. When all of that failed, both crews explored other options…all of this in a matter of a short period of time. Even Sully, well prepared for an MCAS event, seems to barely have managed to regain control…and he was in a sim, not an airplane full of people.
As sims are so good to mimic actual flight, it is still only simulation, in a sim in perfect mechanical condition mimicking a brand new airplane. Throw in 800+ hours air-frame/engine time in a particular density altitude/wind/visibility/cloud cover with 800+ hour engines, control responses, etc… in other words an airplane whose dynamics are slightly different than a brand new one.
But a sim does not mimic a “used” airplane. Real life flying in “used”, dirty, chipped, possibly previously abused airplanes is what the art of flying is all about. The art of flying dictates how we handle an airplane that has had much maintenance done on airplane and the degradation that can cause. All of the above contributes to the actual conditions and the flying characteristics of those two MAX airplanes at the very moment MCAS went bonkers. This is where the art of hand-flying is so important.
We are facing the harsh realities of the collision between automation, eroding flying skills, designers disconnected from the realities of used airplanes while actually in flight. Simulation is great, tactile feed-back is sorely needed, but in the end, the art of hand-flying cannot be replaced by automation that believes every flight is in a brand new airplane, in a flight regime that is only as good as the minds of the programmers. And if those programmers do not fully understand the realities of “used’ airplanes” in a largely polluted environment, it is only capable of simulating things in a perfect world.
We don’t live in a perfect world, nor do we fly perfect airplanes.