No doubt most of you have heard or seen the classic movie "The Right Stuff"....when I was undergoing my training, a couple of decades ago (at least)...I watched a documentary called "The Wrong Stuff"...and it was absolutely riveting stuff!

 

To my amazement, Daryl Lyons from Vatpac found the documentary on You Tube....this documentary was required viewing in the early days of the concept of CRM and many other studies towards better crew interaction, as well as crew-machine interaction.

 

http://youtu.be/hhn9qu7Y9E4

Great watch, I had no idea 80% airline incidents were crew error.

 

System automation will continue on the commercial front and dare I say the pilots of tomorrow will not be on board the aircraft at all ... most likely one pilot (or two) in a remote land based center monitoring 5-10 aircraft and active only when the computer systems are unable to provide a solution to whatever problems occur.

 

Thanks for sharing!

Glad someone else enjoyed it, I do recall it made a huge impression on me, specially the examples from the different studies conducted by NASA.

 

Would love to hear the opinion of real world pilots in this documentary.

Very interesting documentary.

 

Henri

Wow, this is very amazing documentary. I too faced an issue with Pilot error in my first GA flight (oncoming plane pilot was in error). Not to hijack this thread - the story is posted here on the forums

 

Thank you sharing this fascinating documentary. It is a must watch.

I too faced an issue with Pilot error in my first GA flight (oncoming plane pilot was in error).

 

That wasn't "pilot error"... rather typical for an uncontrolled field.

That wasn't "pilot error"... rather typical for an uncontrolled field.

 

Ah, I did not know that. It was scary regardless, as all other airplanes were following standard landing pattern, and this particular aircraft pilot was not responsive in timely manner on the radio announcements.

 

Good to know about uncontrolled field...

its interesting to hear them talk about the automation even back then...the answers still the same to me though, pilots and computers working together. I dont think we will ever see pilotless airliners

Don't think the argument will ever die. An airliner cockpit has evolved from 5 active crew ( pilot, copilot, engineer, navigator and radio operator) to two.

 

The changes were accepted kicking and screaming as technology and automation were used and introduced.

 

Hydraulically powered controls, and more recently fbw have meant even more got introduced.

 

Human factor is the same though, resistance to change, fear of technology, lack of understanding, cultural issues, etc etc... All ingredients for an interesting soup of modern aviation with the same flavour as when our forefathers used to cook it and eat it

I wonder if they take into account the studies that have shown that humans generally cannot take into account any more than 5 distinct factors at a time. The problem is that in a crisis, this number can increase significantly thus leading to chaos in the cockpit. This can be alleviated by good teamwork and division of labor between the crew, but just having to look in a book about which procedures to do while speaking to each other and flipping switches can rapidly increase the number of factors to 6 or more. When taking into account the human tendency to focus on the "expected" (i.e. neglecting information that does not fit the model), it can get complicated to design the human-machine interface.

 

Henri

Thanks for the link Will, downloading now I'll watch this for sure

Thanks. Downloading too.