High Technology and Dark and Stormy Nights,- anywhere.

The news that the Air France A330 black boxes have both been found is excellent. Now comes the wait to see how well preserved,- if at all,- the information is. If both the technical and voice data are retrieveable so that they can be read in tandem some valuable insights are likely about the sequence of events, how they were dealt with and whether there was any chance of a different outcome had the crew had time to figure it out. Looking back it is easy to analyse what different reactions and inputs could have done but on a dark, turbulent night over the South Atlantic life is very different and the luxury of exploring all possibilites just isn't there. There isn't time.

The underlying questions must surely be firstly about the action between humans and very clever computer driven technology and secondly about how well the humans are trained to deal with the dreadful seconds when the technology is overwhelmed and as a last resort says to the humans: "I'm b------d if I know what to do now. I'm out of here. You have a go ". Are the humans, with the type of training and day to day flying they do in with a good chance of saving the day?

In days of yore and before the arrival of EFIS cockpit displays, pilots were trained on a red meat diet of raw data flying ,ideally in places with crowded skies and lousy weather, and had in front of them a bank of dials showing just about everything that was happening amongst the various systems. From constant or frequent scanning they would be aware if any dial started to move even a fraction in an unwanted direction and could also pick up whether an apparently inconsequential thing on one led to a movement on another, and so on. A picture began to build up that something wasn't quite as it should be and give an early warning of possible real trouble. This was similar to the life of an old fashioned family doctor who by knowing his patients over time could see problem A arise, then B and start to think about whether there was any relationship between the two and could be alerted to the possible development of something nasty very early on.Pilots and doctors both need to be clever at diagnostics and both currently share similar problems.

EFIS cockpits marked a change of philosophy to " If there's a problem it will be flagged up. Otherwise you don't need to know what all the other dials you used to see are showing". The pilot's visual databank thus shrank as did understanding of cross-relationships between one fault and another. Thus he or she might not accumulate the experience that told them that a slight flicker top left could lead to another middle right and so on.

The further development of fly by wire automated technology has also led to a spread of the idea "The technology is cleverer than you are so if at all possible let it get on with flying the aircraft and leave the controls well alone". The result has been training and edicts in many cases seriously limiting the amount of hand flying that pilots do.

It is this which makes life even worse on the flight deck when on a dark and foul night there is a sudden necessity to take control and actually fly the aircraft out of trouble. The manufacturers, airlines, training schools and civil aviation authorities all need to seriously review where they are with high technology and where to go with initial pilot training, subsequent line flying and ongoing checks and simulator sessions and how to avoid these usually excellent systems de-skilling pilots who are still required to pull rabbits out of hats when all else fails.