On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:56:47 GMT, "Doug \"Woody\" and Erin Beal"
wrote:

On 2/25/04 7:23 AM, in article , "Keith
Willshaw" wrote:
I've got time in lots of jets with autothrottles, so spare me the preaching
to the choir. I bring up the autothrottle issue on the Airbus because of
their famous mishap with a jet that turned out to be the "world's most
expensive chainsaw" a few years back. That same throttle automation was
responsible for a Russian Airbus doing a wingover about 10 years ago too.

IIRC the first incident you mentioned occured during an airshow where
the autothrottle had been disengaged so the pilot could get closer to
teh edge of the envelope (too close as it turned out).

To me, the no-greater-than-60-degrees-AOB feature on the A320 is disturbing.
The pre-supposition by the folks at Airbus seems to be that the pilot needs
to be kept in a box because he's incapable of staying there on his own.

Err, I'm not sure of your point here. If the pilots are good enough to
avoid 60 degree AOB (Angle of Bank I assume), then what does it matter
if the computer would stop them going faster? And if they aren't that
competent, then the computer should damn well stop them playing silly
buggers. This is the same issue IMO as the G limits built into the FBW
software on most modern aircraft. Some pilots I've spoken to
(specifically F-16 drivers) object to a computer telling them they
can't pull that much g *if they have to* in a life or death situation.
Other point out that if they did exceed the limits they'd likely pull
of the wings, blow a few blood vessels, or flame out - possibly all 3,
and if the computer stops them doing that, that's fine by them.

AS for the current approaches by Boeing and Airbus, I was under teh
impression that with the latest Boeing products (777 and 737NG) they
are virtually indistinguishable to Airbus in their treatmetn of pilots
as system managers, simply becasue the computers do a better job of
keeping on time and min fuel consumption, and money's what the game's
about.

Peter Kemp
---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - drink faster