"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
"Dennis O'Connor" wrote:
WIth GA going to glass panels, we are going to start hearing of
crashes and fatals due to software crashing

I seriously doubt it. Glass panels are nothing new: can you site any
accidents due to s/w crashes in bizjets or airliners?

I know of a bizjet that departed controlled flight near Geneva, Switzerland
about four years ago. The crew was only able to regain control by shutting
down all the electronic avionics. They were getting extreme oscillations in
pitch and altitude excursions in excess of 6,000 feet.

I seem to recall that the famous video of an Airbus 320 descending into the
trees near Paris had something to do with a dispute between the pilot and
the software about what the airplane was going to do. The software won and
the plane landed off runway. There have been several other incidents which
have led pilots' unions and others to question whether their are serious
bugs in the navigation system.

An Osprey crashed on December 11, 2000 when the software failed and the crew
could not reset the computers. They pushed the reset button eight times in
ten seconds and the computers failed to respond.

KAL 801 descended below glide slope and crashed into terrain because of
software failure on the ground.

There have already been GA crashes due to software failures of GPS and other
avionics. The distraction alone is often enough to cause the pilot to lose
control of the aircraft. I can easily see a pilot losing control of a
perfectly good airplane because his panel suddenly displayed the blue screen
of death. This is largely a training issue. As these systems become more
popular we will have to develop better training to help pilots deal with
emergencies in these systems. Too many pilots think that they would never be
so stupid as to crash an airplane just because their airspeed indicator quit
working. Do not think for a second that you are immune to such distractions.
Nobody is razor sharp 100% of the time.

I think that overall the glass cockpits will reduce the number of accidents.
They provide greater situational awareness and often introduce things like
better weather information, TAWS and traffic avoidance to the GA cockpit.
This can only help pilots with better decision making. The benefits far
outweigh the problems they introduce.

The glass cockpits will not make GA as safe as airlines, though. The biggest
killer in GA is low level maneuvering, with commercial pilots getting more
than their share of the accidents. Glass does nothing to prevent this.
People are still going to buzz their girlfriends, fly in canyons and
mountain passes, augur in while correcting back to final, etc. A glass
cockpit does not give your airplane any capabilities it did not have before,
so if you decide to fly inside a canyon you still run the risk of
encountering terrain that rises faster than you can climb with no room to
turn around and escape.