mk1civilian asked: What's your take on cockpit automation? Where do you trust it, where for you find it helpful, where don't you? (P.S. Have fun in the idiot box. If you turn up the ICS volume, you can hear the circus music!)

Oh man, this is a great question. I’ve got a fancy sounding degree in Aviation Human Factors which is buzzwork-speak for making the man and machine work together. Truthfully I skipped those classes a lot because they were dreadful. I think some pilot’s fear automation. For new pilots it’s easy to get behind an automated airplane because it might be moving faster than your brain is. But mostly I think a lot of pilots fear it because, as I’m sure you know, engineers would probably just as soon kick us out of the cockpit and replace us with Otto (as they already are in your former arena of aviation). Surely you’ve heard about the new plane that’s crewed by just a man and a dog; The man to mind the automation and the dog to bite him if he touches anything.

I think technology in general has elevated aviation to unprecedented levels of safety, which is great. As far as automation goes, I’m a big fan of the aspects which makes a pilot’s life easier during the most busy times, i.e., emergencies. Autofeather, automatically firing Halon bottles, air return pressurization memory, etc. I think there are quite literally too many of those to list. I think some of the best automation is that which still keeps the pilot very much in the loop. Something like TCAS or EGPWS is so successful because it realizes it’s limitations and relies on the human stick and rudder input to save the day. Then of course there’s the less stressful times where good automation just makes the plane more effecient and easier to fly. FADEC, for example, does both (I already miss it in the CRJ200 but I’m looking forward to it again in the 700/900). Along those same lines, the hold feature in my FMS makes holding so easy it’s a joke. You spend ALL that time in your primary instrument training learning about proper holding entries and timing and how to determine inbound and outbound courses…now I just push about 6 buttons and the airplane flies a far more perfect hold than I ever could. It’s amazing really what we have compared to what guys like Lindbergh worked with. It makes me feel soft sometimes, though if I really cared I’d go fly the bush. There are so many little things though that I surely take for granted. It’s so helpful that it blends into the background and becomes so fundamental that I ignore it at this point. Unobtrusive yet effective. That’s good automation.

Obviously there are downsides. I’m a pretty young guy, fairly receptive to technology, but even I get a little irked by the stuff that reduces the pilot to simply a voting member in the cockpit. I’m finding a lot of the switchology on the CRJ series is like that. The position of certain valves or pumps are governed not by the switches but a combination of switch position and system logic. My instructor tells me constantly, “Don’t look at the switch, look at the screen. The switch is fiction, the screen is fact.” It’s not always as simple as this switch on means this turns on. This will turn on if the switch is on AND the whatever logic is satisfied. Granted some of it is to keep pilots from doing anything stupid, but there’s something disconcerting about it. The autothrottles on the Airbus freak me out. You lock them in the rating detent and the engines roll up and down all day without the thrust levers moving an inch. I don’t like that. That’s probably one of the worst ones to me.

Thanks for the question. I’ll keep an ear open for the music tomorrow but generally between the fire bells, stall warbler, and my own cursing it gets hard to hear much of anything.