I’ve never understood why aircraft engines have a mixture setting that has to be manually set by the pilot instead of just having an auto-mixture for always optimal efficiency / performance. In the same realm, why not have a automatic pitch control for optimal performance during acceleration / climb out? Both of these were invented 90 years ago with overrides for specific circumstances and were commonplace in all sorts of aircraft on both sides of WWII, but for some reason both controls are usually completely manually operated even in today’s modern aircraft.
In: Engineering
Some aircraft do have automated mixture, pitch and even throttle. Others have detentes in the controls to make it easier for the pilot to set it to predetermined optimal settings. The problem is that any such automation can fail and you need to be able to have reliable backup systems. An automated system can even be worse then nothing in an emergency where the automatics may not handle the unexpected conditions. There are a number of airplane crashes which were caused by automatic systems doing the wrong thing during a failure without the pilots noticing or being able to override it in time. So if you want to install an automatic mixture control you need to buy something which is properly tested in all different conditions and it needs to be installed in such a way that the pilot can monitor it and if needed take over control of the mixture and the pilot needs training in how to do this. That makes it quite an expensive device which might be fine for a twin engine commercial charter airplane but not for a small single engine club or private aircraft.
First, Automation is a thing. and there are automated systems.
But why is manual still prominent? outside of cost. Automation can fuk up, especially when you are dealing with such a critical part of the plane.
In simple engineering terms: The more simple a system is, the more reliable and safe it is. Adding automation not only complicates that but adds a whole can of complexity and point of failure.
Take a look at Max 8 incident, While not telling the pilot the automated system was in place caused major problems, Even after telling the pilot of the system, sometimes the pilot has to fight the automated system, which is what you DO NOT want on a plane.
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