Comparative study of Boeing and Airbus - Part III

In 1914, an American, Lawrence Sperry, demonstrated gyroscope-stabilised, straight-and-level flight in Paris.

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This was the beginning of the automatic pilot. As years passed and flight distances got longer, automatic pilots for aircraft were introduced to carry out the mundane task of physical flying, and to free the pilot's mind to navigate, communicate and manage the flight. Not all Airline people were happy when autopilots were introduced.

"I pay those guys to fly, so let them fly. I'll be damned if I'll pay them to just sit there." Eddie Rickenbacker WWI Veteran and Chairman of Eastern Airlines, USA Those early autopilots were 'dumb and dutiful.' Pilots referred to the autopilot as 'George'. With the advent of digital computers and satellite technology, even the other two functions (navigation and communication) were taken over by automatics, and a Flight Management system (FMS) was introduced.

Once the route was programmed, the FMS even tuned the required radio frequencies automatically in the vicinity, for navigation.

The Flight Management System (FMS) Display and Input Keys, the Human/Machine Interphase in modern times.

Airbus flight instructors used to say that if the Inertial Reference Systems were the brain of the aircraft the FMS was the heart. In addition, a host of parameters, from the operating condition of the engines to what movies are watched by passengers, can be monitored through telemetry from the ground in real time.

HUMAN FACTORS A psychologist named David Beaty, formerly a World War II RAF pilot (for which he was awarded the DFC with bar) and BOAC Captain, propounded that there are many 'Human Factors' behind aircraft accidents. Beaty was born in Hatton, Ceylon in 1919 to a Methodist minister and his wife, both on a missionary posting from Britain, and received his early education at Kingswood College, Kandy. When Beaty first mooted his 'human factors in aircraft accidents' concept in 1967 it was regarded as controversial. After all, aviators were supposed to be supermen, not normal human beings.