Air France 447: Smart planes still vulnerable to human error

Smart planes? Just like the term "smartphone", it is a misnomer. When i hear "smart" i think of intelligence. Well, an airplane or a phone is not intelligent. They will not do things all by themselves, WITHOUT human input. A phone will not sit there and start emailing, texting or calling all by itself, unless a human has told it to do so - or if a human really screwed up in the software development. Until the human factor is taken out, these things are just a pile of metal, wires and circuit boards. nothing more

Regardless of what happened, I knew they would hang this on the Pilots before it was over with since they are very dead and cannot defend themselves. If it was as simple as they say and the pilots got overwhelmed and confused, and the computer threw up it's hands, then there is a serious problem there in the initial design to commence with. As the article says, the emphasis now is on the tech part of things and less on flying the plane. That is sad and it is a mistake whether you are flying a C-150 or a 747. The basics of aerodynamics such as rotation(unsticking), stall,trim etc. are the same as far as their functions go and basic airmanship in the type of aircraft you are in is essential. I think it is a mistake for a pilot not to have total control and to be able overidden by a computer. Flight envelopes are the max limit to which a product has been tested. Most can exceed that momentarily and a pilot may need that edge momentarily to get his tail out of a crack. It is not something you want to do on a regular basis but it is nice to have that capbility if needed. There are hundreds of things that can happen in the air that cannot be anticipated by a computer programmer back on the ground in a design lab somewhere and those are the situations in which that airmanship is needed.