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This is part of an unsettling trend where companies prefer to keep users in the dark about the underlying tech of their products. For normal consumer tech, I ca
by iliketosleep 8y ago
This is part of an unsettling trend where companies prefer to keep users in the dark about the underlying tech of their products. For normal consumer tech, I can kind of understand, but what astonishes me is that this mindset has extended to aircraft, where the "users" are pilots of commercial aircraft!
The article's quote from a high-ranking boeing official sums it up: the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information—and significantly more technical data—than they needed or could digest.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI agree with you here, though I cannot understand this in "normal consumer tech" either. Most people may not need to know, but a subset of customers does needs to know. People have also incredibly good mental capacity to filter out information not relevant to their needs (as evidenced by continued existence of advertising online). RE that Boeing quote, I'd really love to know on what research on human mental capacity they based this decision. This is not a snark, I understand that a lot of decisions that go into airplanes are based on solid reasons. This particular doesn't seem to be one, though I'd love to know if I'm wrong about this.
- iliketosleep 8y agoOne of Boeing's selling points for this model was that pilots would not need "simulator training beyond that already required for older versions". Disclosing the extra technical information may have invalidated this "no extra training needed!" selling point. In this context, the whole "inundating average pilots with too much information" argument looks more like an excuse.
- black-tea 8y agoThat is worrying. Part of the reason the roads are so dangerous relative to the skies and railways is that the people operating those cars are not professional drivers but merely normal people who are barely trained. Has it got to the point where pilots of commercial aircraft are just normal people who can't handle actually knowing how a plane works?
- iliketosleep 8y agoNo. Just compare the difficulty of getting a regular driver's license to that of a license to fly commercial airliners. It's safe to say that _almost_ every pilot can control a plane without incident when sensors / automated systems fail, so long as they are given full manual control. Automation overriding pilot inputs during sensor failure is a recipe for disaster.
- jakobegger 8y ago> Automation overriding pilot inputs during sensor failure is a recipe for disaster. In 2009 an Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic ocean killing more than 200 people because a confused pilot kept pulling the plane up, despite loud stall warnings from automatic safety systems [1]. In the discussions of that event, one commenter asked, "Why did [the plane] not override the pilots' inputs and force a pitch-down?" [2] Designing safety critical systems is difficult. If the automated system fails, the pilot needs to be able to take over manual control. But at the same time, if the pilot does something stupid, the automatic system should prevent that. I'm not sure how to square that. [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9231855/Air-France-Flight-447-Damn-it-were-going-to-crash.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9231855/Air-France-Fl... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8452080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8452080
- AstralStorm 8y agoThis is equivalent to a confused deputy variant of a Byzantine failure. Since you already have allegedly redundant pilots and alarm systems and hopefully sensors, the remaining part is figuring out which failure detector has ultimately failed to work and why. Also if redundant pilots are failing, it's a systematic failure in training, fatal to airlines and whoever designs training simulators. The most potentially fatal to Boeing scenario is a systematic failure or negligence in terms of redundancy. Hampering pilot training is bad enough. Another potential failure point is a software issue which means negligence in safety critical software engineering.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
- Hunisgung 8y agoTelling pilots that when they fly a Boeing, they are always in control and have the last say has been part of Boeing's narrative against Airbus for as long as I can remember. This might have contributed to their reluctance to talk about adding flight envelope protection features and hiding that even when pilots are "manually" flying, the flight control computers can kick in. Seems like a reminder that "reality must take precedence over public relations".
- threatofrain 8y agoNow I'm happier than before about the direction of Google's exploit hunting program, and their willingness to report vulnerabilities.
- FabHK 8y ago> This is part of an unsettling trend where companies prefer to keep users in the dark about the underlying tech of their products I think for a variety of reasons you cannot equate Boeing with, dunno, tech startups and IoT makers. The history, culture, and regulatory environment in commercial aviation is very different from "normal consumer tech". (In other words, even if there were a superficial similarity here, it would not constitute part of or evidence for some sort of overarching trend affecting both normal consumer trend and commercial aviation.)
- Puer 8y agoHow long until Tesla releases an over the air update that changes the behavior of familiar systems and causes an accident?
- alistairSH 8y agoHow long until Tesla releases another over the air update that changes the behavior of familiar systems and causes an accident? FTFY.