Mxsmanic wrote:
These are all examples of poor design. It's extremely dangerous to
put such features into FBW software unless you can be certain that all
pilots will know as much about the software as the designers did, so
that they'll know all the modes and all the combinations and
permutations of possibilities.

For once, I don't see how anyone could disagree. The FAA commissioned a
study of these issues. Check out the site map and the Find All Issues
section.

http://www.flightdeckautomation.com

If you aren't going to let the pilot control the plane, why have a
pilot at all?

Boeing thinks along those lines. They have soft limits vs. Airbus'
hard limits.

And if the computers are going to second-guess the
pilot's intentions every step of the way without the pilot knowing it,
having a pilot is worse than not having one.

Well, not really of course. Interestingly, it seems that a lot of
pilots love the Airbus overrides. They can flick the handles and not
worry too much. Others seem to want to rely more on the usual stick
and rudder skills. You could argue both ways.

Computers aren't all bad. Consider all the traction control etc
computers in cars these days. (I actually don't like them
second-guessing me sometimes, but for the majority of drivers they're a
good thing.)

This is a good example of poor human-machine interactions, created by
poor and inadequate design.

I agree that letting programmers decide how things work is often a Bad
Idea.

Kev