A Question of Control
A report by Peter Williams
The job of the airline pilot is changing. Less and less, is he required actually to fly the aircraft; more and more, his job is to monitor the machines that are flying it for him.
Today flight computers already control the navigation and performance of aircraft, from shortly after take-oft until touch-down. Now Open Secret looks at the next generation of passenger aircraft and the pilots who will fly them.
But what effect is the automation having on the flying skills of a pilot? What effect on the job itself? For the cockpit has become a flying ' office It is an office that, in future aircraft such as the latest Anglo-French Airbus and Boeing 757, may be manned by two men instead of three. For the computers, say the manufacturers, are making the third man redundant. So in the 1990s, who will have control of the aircraft? Man or machine? And how is this delicate balance of control changing?
Film editor ROGER DAVIES Producer DAVID DUGAN
(Open Secret returns in a fortnight) Brookes On ... page 81