Re: non man rated booster compared to shuttle?

From: Herb Schaltegger (herb.schaltegger_at_gmail.com.invalid)
Date: 08/18/04 

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 18:27:27 -0500

In article <74f0gc-0ff.ln@Mineshaft.local>,
 peter@adelphia.net (Peter Stickney) wrote:

> As forthe other
> folks, let's jet say that I'm not overly thrilled with the idea of
> flying in an FBW Airbus. The human-airplane interface is, to put it
> kindly, unnatural, and a good chunk of that appears to be a basic
> philosophy that the airplane should be flying the pilots, rather than
> the other way 'round. I can understand that decision if you're
> planning for you sole customers to be ex-colonial airlines with
> low-time, inexperienced pilots trained from scratch for your airplane,
> but to my mind it's a flawed world view. (So much for my ranting - if
> you're a Flight Controls Guy for Airbus Industrie, don't take it too
> personally. Human/Machine interface happens to be one of _my_ hot
> buttons).

Interesting perspective, Peter. One of the other dad's connected with
my son's baseball teams is a captain for United and a former Navy S-3
pilot. He's currently type-rated on the 757, 767 and Triple-7 and the
later-model Airbuses. He just took a slot flying the Airbuses
domestically after about two years flying them on U.S/London and
U.S./Peking routes. In his opinion, the Airbus is much more comfortable
and easy-to-fly plane than the Boeings; I wonder how much of that is the
"plane flying the pilot" versus "pilot flying the plane" aspect you
mention. 

-- 
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
   ~ Robert A. Heinlein
<http://www.angryherb.net>
Quantcast