For the life of me, I have absolutely no idea how you can look at what has happened with the Max and believe that more entrenched automation is the answer.
I would love it when the planes are as easily operated as an elevator. It's probably more realistic than self-driving cars.
Holy crap the very first paragraph is opposite-of-reality.txt
> Boeing Co. is increasingly committed to transferring more control of aircraft from pilots to computers after two crashes exposed flaws in an automated system on its 737 MAX that overpowered aviators in the disasters.
The whole problem was the computer overriding the best efforts of the pilots until the planes nosed into the ground.
It’s the disconnect between pilots mental models of what’s going on and what’s actually going on that caused the Max‘s and several other related crashes on different aircraft. As such software designed based on how the system actually works may actually be both simpler and safer than increasingly abstracted fly by wire systems trying to safely intuit what the pilots want.
An example from 10 years ago: https://www.fastcompany.com/1669720/how-lousy-cockpit-design...
When the FAA certified the 737 Max the MCAS Software was able to move the horizontal tail a max of 0.6 degrees. (out of a total of 5 degrees) The software flying on those planes was in fact able to move the horizontal tail 4.17 times that amount: 2.5 degrees. They never told anyone this changed. The system went from being able to control 12% of the tail range to 50% of its range.
Those pilots were pulling up on the nose of the aircraft with their feet pressed against the controls. Directing the aircraft with clear intent and skill. The 737's automation had unbeknownst to them and with their knowledge of the aircraft - un-overridable, tilted the horizontal tail into a position that would, under any operating condition direct the nose of the craft into the ground.