This Chris Sorensen/Macleans.CA article provides an excellent overview of an issue that is of interest to all air travelers – that is, the increasing number of loss-of-control airline accidents over the past five years:
Statistically speaking, modern avionics have made flying safer than ever. But the crash of [Turkish] Flight 1951 is just one of several recent, high-profile reminders that minor problems can quickly snowball into horrific disasters when pilots don’t understand the increasingly complex systems in the cockpit, or don’t use them properly. The point was hammered home later that year when Air France Flight 447 stalled at nearly 38,000 feet and ended up crashing into the Atlantic, killing all 228 on board. . . [. . .]
Why is it happening? Some argue that the sheer complexity of modern flight systems, though designed to improve safety and reliability, can overwhelm even the most experienced pilots when something actually goes wrong. Others say an increasing reliance on automated flight may be dulling pilots’ sense of flying a plane, leaving them ill-equipped to take over in an emergency. Still others question whether pilot-training programs have lagged behind the industry’s rapid technological advances.
It’s a vexing problem for airlines, and a worrisome one for their customers. Unlike mechanical failures that can be traced to flawed design or poor maintenance, there is no easy fix when experienced and highly trained pilots make seemingly inexplicable decisions that end with a US$250-million airplane literally falling out of the sky. “The best you can do is teach pilots to understand automation and not to fight it,” [flight simulation expert Sunjoo] Advani says, noting that the focus in recent years has, perhaps myopically, been on simplifying and speeding up training regimes, secure in the knowledge that planes have never been smarter or safer. “We’ve worked ourselves into a little bit of a corner here. Now we have to work ourselves back out.”
Read the entire article. And then have a stiff drink before you get on your next commercial flight.