Automation vs piloting skills
Posted: September 3rd, 2011 | 1 Comment »Interesting article about how “automation addiction” has eroded pilots’ flying skills, to the point that it is has contributed to “hundreds of deaths in airline crashes in the last five years”. Scary, one more point for the whole “technology is making us stupid” (example here) point of view.
Pilots’ “automation addiction” has eroded their flying skills to the point that they sometimes don’t know how to recover from stalls and other mid-flight problems, say pilots and safety officials. The weakened skills have contributed to hundreds of deaths in airline crashes in the last five years.
Some 51 “loss of control” accidents occurred in which planes stalled in flight or got into unusual positions from which pilots were unable to recover, making it the most common type of airline accident, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Since we are talking here about stalls and other “unusual” flight situations, I am not sure if we are dealing here with a skill erosion due to the autopilot, are a lack of skills due to the absence of regular training for “unusual” situations. Considering the economic pressure on airlines, my guess is that the latter is at least partially contributing to those accidents.