http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...39804579204202526288042?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
The link is to a WSJ story in today's (Mon 11/18/2013) story behind their paywall. An FAA report may be released as early as this week which is the the effort of "a team of industry, labor, academic and government officials," and points to overreliance on automation by flight crews. A few excerpts:
A soon-to-be-released study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration determined, among other things, that "pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems and may be reluctant to intervene" or switch them off in unusual or risky circumstances, according to a draft reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Among the accidents and certain categories of incidents that were examined, roughly two-thirds of the pilots either had difficulty manually flying planes or made mistakes using flight computers.
Pilot lapses and automation were implicated in the high-profile 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 that stalled and went down in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 aboard, just as they are suspected of causing lat July's crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 during a botched landing in San Francisco.
But the latest effort stands out due to the wide-ranging collection of experts who participated. It also breaks new ground because the panel sifted through large volumes of voluntary safety reports filed by pilots, along with additional data gathered by cockpit observers on more than 9,000 flights world-wide.
The link is to a WSJ story in today's (Mon 11/18/2013) story behind their paywall. An FAA report may be released as early as this week which is the the effort of "a team of industry, labor, academic and government officials," and points to overreliance on automation by flight crews. A few excerpts:
A soon-to-be-released study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration determined, among other things, that "pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems and may be reluctant to intervene" or switch them off in unusual or risky circumstances, according to a draft reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Among the accidents and certain categories of incidents that were examined, roughly two-thirds of the pilots either had difficulty manually flying planes or made mistakes using flight computers.
Pilot lapses and automation were implicated in the high-profile 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 that stalled and went down in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 aboard, just as they are suspected of causing lat July's crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 during a botched landing in San Francisco.
But the latest effort stands out due to the wide-ranging collection of experts who participated. It also breaks new ground because the panel sifted through large volumes of voluntary safety reports filed by pilots, along with additional data gathered by cockpit observers on more than 9,000 flights world-wide.