fly in the face of the evidence

[cjsmith]

The Crash of Air France 447 and what it has to tell us about flight automation.

“To put it briefly, automation has made it more and more unlikely that ordinary airline pilots will ever have to face a raw crisis in flight—but also more and more unlikely that they will be able to cope with such a crisis if one arises.”

(For any pilot types reading this, yes, it’s THAT Langewiesche.)

Long, and about five years old; I found it worth it.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

That somewhat reminds me of this even older article from Atlantic Monthly on the Valujet 592 crash that I recently came across: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/03/the-lessons-of-valujet-592/306534/ They both sort of share the idea that there are limits to what's possible with eliminating risk, and that the systems we put in place to address one sort of risk also bring their own failure modes of different sorts of risks.

[cjsmith]

Very much so. (Same author.) I think he makes a valid, if uncomfortable, point.

[zahraa]

That makes total sense.

[cjsmith]

Yeah. I wish the world were such that it would be possible to eliminate ALL the accidents. Make it PERFECT! But no. And now we cross from safety engineering right in over into philosophy. :)