Why do you need to press so many buttons to start a plane? Can’t there be just one button to start everything in sequence automatically?
In: Technology
Part of it is the checklist aspect that others have mentioned. Also, it’s kind of like why high end cameras have tons of controls while your smartphone camera has very few and does most of the work for you. Cars, and smartphone cameras, are designed to be easy to use in most circumstances. They are highly automated because that makes them easy to use. The tradeoff is reduced control, which means that when you encounter one of the circumstances that the automated systems can’t handle well, you don’t have easy access to controls for the individual subsystems, AND you probably don’t understand them well enough to know what to change to make it work.
In a smartphone or car, that’s generally ok, because you can put the smartphone down, or pull your car off the road. On an airplane, it’s not ok. The pilot needs to be able to directly control many different systems at a moment’s notice in case something goes really wrong, and they have to be accustomed to directly controlling those systems, so that if they ever need to do it for real, it will come naturally to them. They might not have time to fidget.
So that’s the other part. Pilots need to be masters at controlling many different subsystems because a situation COULD occur where they need to assume direct control of one of those systems.
Case in point: the two recent disasters involving 737 MAX aircraft. There was an automatic system to handle keeping the aircraft’s angle of attack (how much its pointed up/down) at an optimal level, and the pilots weren’t trained in how to take direct control of that system, and didn’t have an easy way to bypass the automatic system (which malfunctioned) and assume direct control. Result.. two crashes, hundreds dead.
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