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
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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