Skybird
08-16-09, 06:31 AM
I waited quite some time, hoping that they would translate it, but unfortunately Der Spiegel decided not to include this article in their international edition. So it is for those of you only who are able to understand German. It is a very worthy reading.
The essay deals with the phenomenon of computers in airliners suddenly developing a life of their own, which often spelled desaster or near-desaster, and hints at the risks of even higher automatisation in cockpits, which leads many carriers to constantly reduce the number of flight hours required for pilots to become promoted for active cockpit service (it went down from 300 to 150 with some companies, while reducing it to just 70 for some people is in sight), while the technical and digital problems become more and more complex and unable to be thoroughly tested and understood both by manufacturers and crews inflight.
I did not know that the situation regardiong computers going amok in midair is so bad. Makes you thinking twice about boarding an airliner.
Some things in this area of computerisation go seriously wrong for sure.
Don't read this if you plan to fly in the near future. :D
http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/dokument-druck.html?id=66208581&top=SPIEGEL
The essay deals with the phenomenon of computers in airliners suddenly developing a life of their own, which often spelled desaster or near-desaster, and hints at the risks of even higher automatisation in cockpits, which leads many carriers to constantly reduce the number of flight hours required for pilots to become promoted for active cockpit service (it went down from 300 to 150 with some companies, while reducing it to just 70 for some people is in sight), while the technical and digital problems become more and more complex and unable to be thoroughly tested and understood both by manufacturers and crews inflight.
I did not know that the situation regardiong computers going amok in midair is so bad. Makes you thinking twice about boarding an airliner.
Some things in this area of computerisation go seriously wrong for sure.
Don't read this if you plan to fly in the near future. :D
http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/dokument-druck.html?id=66208581&top=SPIEGEL