Flight crews may only fly for a few minutes per flight. That might be true, but for me, unless the departure requires the use of the autopilot and there are some extenuating circumstances, I'll hand fly up into the mid twenties before hitting the AP button. For approach, depending on the weather, I'll click off the autopilot either passing through 10,000 or on downwind. That is more of a moving target depending on how fatigued I feel and what other external threats we're being faced with. I'm not alone in that. That's pretty much the norm form what I've seen.
And, also, the much bandied about statistic in the news that airliners ever land themselves is completely blown out of proportion. I'd say less than 1% of the flights I've flown have ended in an autoland.
Now to the bigger subject of the SHTF moments... we hear about the big "saves," Al Haynes and UA232, Sully Sullenberger and the Miracle on the Hudson, and the above mentioned Quantas flight from Singapore.
But I'm betting that so many more times each day, there is a crew somewhere in the world that "saves" the plane and passengers (or cargo) from when automation goes wrong. These flights aren't met by news reporters and posed in front of television cameras for the world to see. More than likely then land, look at each other, say "Well, that was effed up," make a logbook entry and go to the hotel.
Here's a recent post by one of my co-workers, with just another day at the office...
That's a bad day at the office, but I'm guessing these kind of failures happen multiple times each day. Maybe not this bad, but at least to the point where human intervention is required to interpret things when the sensors fail and the automation gets confused, or just gives up.
We're all pilots here... how many times have you done something in the cockpit because something didn't look or sound right. Your intuition took over and you were able to make a decision based on your experiences and senses and ability.
Many times I've asked "do you smell something?" Most of the times, it's our lunch burning, but twice, it hasn't been. We were able to stop what could have been a much worse situation from developing.
Some of you guys sound like you are the experts on future AI, sense-and-avoid systems and autonomous flight control. I'm way out of my league there, and I'll defer to your expertise.
But I think we are a long way off from taking the human completely out of the piloting loop and an even longer way off for it to make sense economically with little or no improvement in the safety of air travel.
That's my $0.02... worth about what you paid for it...
THAT'S a real positive thing to say.
FA's would be thanking God!
