Driving down the A500 I cannot help but notice an airliner departing East Midlands in a climbing turn that looks more ballsy than average? For it's Ryanair practising circuits and go-arounds at the same place I did the same thing in the same aircraft back in the early 1990s... just remember to turn base over the power-station!
Ordinarily this would be done in a simulator nowadays, a much more eco-friendly solution altogether. Nonetheless crashing an airliner is not altogether eco-friendly and there is no surer guarantee against that contingency than practising in the real thing.
For it turns out that over at Heathrow, BA nearly succeeded in stalling an airliner over central London during an approach. Unlike the aircraft seen here, which was designed in the 1960s, the Airbus A320 was a product of the 1980s and introduced 'fly-by-wire' technology wherein effectively the airliner does the flying in response to pilot input.
The problem with that is you've an airliner that does everything for you except suck your dick whilst in Normal Law, but turns out to be your worst enemy in Alternate when frankly it's a bitch to fly. The principal problem is that during the 99.99% of the time it's doing the flying for you, you've largely forgotten how to do it yourself.
Stalls in airliners, which involve losses of altitude of hundreds of feet at a time you might be at just two or three thousand, are fortunately rare and you'd have to re-run the FlightRadar 24 to see if this event was actual or incipient... and I'm not going to pay for that.
Suffice it to recall that Air France 447 stalled all the way into the sea from around 35,000 feet because, essentially, none of its three pilots recognised a stall situation. But had you learned to fly circa WW1, the stall would have been the first thing you got to know about in an aeroplane (beside the spin, which killed people until a pilot happenstanced upon a recovery) and your constant companion thereafter.
The situation is reflected in largely-electrical cars, and moreso again in self-driving types. They are statistically altogether safer, like largely-electrical airliners, but at those times when they call upon motor skills: we've largely forgotten what they are.* It's not though a particular airline thing or a particular crew or pilot thing, but simply an evolving technology thing.
And as we segue between a human-managed world and an AI-, we may as well get used to it. Elon gives us ten years, but airliners are designed and manufactured to last many more tens of years than that, and they have seats up front. Will we get to see a robot sat on the flight-deck and leaning over to the captain to say, You can't do that, Dave?
I do hope so.
Unless you're playing Grand Theft Auto instead.
