Are older experienced pilots, who don't trust the fly by wire computer, more dangerous than

[Savannahmann]

21. I would disagree.

Drone Pilots know if the airplane goes out of control, it will crash essentially harmlessly, and then another will be sent up for him to control.

Old school pilots used to say they were very worried about a crash, because they were at the front of the plane, and the first to arrive at the scene of the crash.

Back in the old days, when controls were wires and pulleys, the pilot could feel the plane talking to him. A vibration in the stick could tell him that there was a problem in the wing. A small shudder when he turned left told him that the elevators had an issue. Pilots flew by the seat of their pants in those days. Obviously that is not suitable with large aircraft. But the hands on time is worth it's weight in gold. People trust the computer not to screw up.

Let's look at drivers as an example. Everyone knows that teenagers have faster reflexes. They are faster than my own. They are at their physical peak of performance. From the age of twenty on, their reflexes get slower, not faster. The reason they have the most accidents is not because of reaction time, it's experience. They don't know what to do with those lightning quick reflexes. Where the older driver knows what to do, because they have been through it many times before. They've had the back end break loose and they know how it feels. They've had the car slide, wheels spin, and people cut them off.

I may be a half step slower, but I know what to do with that step. I know where to put it, and where to avoid putting it.

Now, a Pilot that has thousands of hours watching the computer fly is much like our teenager above. They don't have much time dealing with problems, so they make mistakes. The answer is not more computers, but more time giving people that vital experience that is the difference between the teenaged driver and the thirty five year old driver. If the computers drove the cars, and the "driver" managed the computer systems, they would be no better than the teenager if something happened. Because they don't have the experience of all those years. They don't know what the car feels like under them. They haven't felt the wheel pull one way as a tire lost pressure. They would make the same mistakes the teenager would, because despite the years behind the wheel, they don't drive much, the computer does.

Helicopter pilots are starting to make some of the same mistakes, because Autopilot systems have been developed for the Helicopters. It used to be they were the best pilots, because there was no autopilot system and the thousands of hours was always with their hands on the sticks and their feet on the pedals. They could feel the Helicopter talking to them. Now, they are supposed to let the computer fly, the Insurance Company demands it, and take over only if there is a problem. But the problem finds someone with next to no actual experience flying with their hands and feet and eyes and the seat of their pants. Because those thousands of hours were no more demanding than if you were doing so like your drone pilot in front of a computer screen.

Set up the flight simulator at home. Get the plane in the air and tell the computer to fly it. Leave the room, it doesn't matter if you're there, the computer is in charge. But if something happens, now you have to fly the plane, and one that isn't behaving properly. Now, you need to be there, and need to know the plane, how it is supposed to respond, versus how it is actually responding. You need to know how the damned thing flies normally, so you can detect the smallest change when it is abnormal.

More hands on time, more experience. Simulators are great, better than risking a plane full of people, but to make the simulator really useful, the pilot needs those thousands of hours flying by hand, not monitoring the computer. It would be as if you were suddenly in the cockpit of a Formula One racer in the rain headed for the wall. You don't know how the car drives normally, so you have no idea how to get it out of the situation it's in. You would hit the wall, and probably die. Because you never had a chance to put the years of experience driving to work. You had no instinctive feeling of how the car was supposed to drive.