"Fly By Wire": New Book Suggests That Sully Wasn't So Amazing

The New York Times:

Mr. Sullenberger made a good choice to land on the Hudson. But his actual control of Flight 1549, Mr. Langewiesche writes, was "less reflective of unusual skill." No knock against Sully, he suggests, but almost any decent pilot could have done it.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[Holderiho]

It is always easy to have an opinion about an incident from the comfort of an office chair. Having to cope with a powerless aircraft near to the ground and even at cruising level is a very demanding mind-job especially on an Airbus, which is only going to provide Alternate Law flight controls with limited flight protections. To me it's quite obvious that Mr. Langewiesche has no idea about the challenges to the flight-crew in incidents of a similar severity.

[gaja]

I agree! I find it amazing that the author could even suggest such a thing! It's not only important what actions Sully took before they "landed" in the water, but afterward as well. Without such calm, focused leadership - many more passengers (and people living in the surrounding area in the plane's path) could have been killed or traumatized.

[Ancient Hacker]

As an exdample of fly-by-wire wonderfulness in an Airbus, peruse this bit of recent history:

An Airbus went off the end of a runway a while back, and an investigation revealed:

* A leetle bit of water froze in a brake cylinder.

* The brake system software detected the problem, in the secondary brake
system. So far so good. The software then:

* Did its normal thing, disabled the PRIMARY brake system, the good one.

* Put up a misleading error message on an out-of the way display page.

* The pilot eventually noticed this error message, so he pressed a button
to clear the message.

* But he pressed the button for under 50 msec, so one flight control
computer saw the press, but the other one didn't.

* The computers noticed they disagreed, so one of them shut down.

* The pilot noticed the shutdown, so he pressed a "master reset" button.

* But as it turns out, the "master reset" button doesn't really, like,
reset everything, but it tells you it did.

* Therefore when they applied the brakes, only the secondary (frozen
up) brakes were applied.

* The pilots, used to this super double-redundant computer-controlled
brake system, didn't even think to apply the brakes manually.

* Plane went off end of runway, many $$$$$$$$ of damage.

That's just one example of AirBus software wonderfulness.

[Ancient Hacker]

What a bunch of crapola. The "fly by wire" stuff can only smooth out a pilot's actions and keep them from the most blatant mistakes, like flying too slowly. Sully is skilled enough to never need or activate all those baby-minder gimracks.

As for fly-by-wire's help during this landing, there was NONE. Sully had to judge the situation, consider his options, estimate the chances of landing on the water and avoiding river traffic, and much more. Fly by wire made NO contribution to these critical judgments. The plane has no eyes, no brain, and no experience.

If you want to get real, look up how fly-by-wire and poor programming caused a major goof up during that landing in Spain. The automation goofed up totally and almost caused a disaster out of a minor glitch;

[aonemandog]

Sounds to me like the author needed money, threw this book together as quickly as possible to take advantager of the recent occurrence and, in order to try to hype the book, tried to stir up a little crap about the "heroism" of Sullenburger by saying that any good pilot would /could have done the same. We will never know if the author was right, but my money is on Sullenburger. He did the right thing at the right time. The author, in my estimation, did the wrong thing at the wrong time.

[Xenussister]

Yep, it's a pure moneymaking venture. I hope his book sinks without a trace.

[Choicelady]

When crises occur, planes do NOT fly themselves. Heading for the Hudson, keeping the ship in trim, watching air speed, keeping the nose up instead of down - all careful, professional, outstanding human judgments. If "anyone" can fly an airbus, then why aren't all air emergencies this successful in outcome? Because not all pilots are this level-headed.

The need some people have to find a reason NOT to honor good work, is simply astonishing. Comparing a pilot under an emergency situation as being inferior to Lindberg is just silly. Captain Sullenberger deserves the accolades he's receiving. Good for him. Shame on his detractors.

[HeevenSteven]

The author of that times piece was very impressed with Langewiesche's description of what a jet engine does--he called it revelatory! It's amazing to me that so many people have no clue, even including a guy who reviews a book about this subject for the NYT..

It reminds me of a quote by James Burke in the begining of his PBS "Connections" series. "Never have so many people, known so little, about so much."

[Choicelady]

I remember. Unfortunately, as a former industrial historian I'd have to say Burke was one of the people. He made a lot of errors in his pronouncements, especially downplaying the persistent role of human skill. His fascination with machines was never put into a proper context about the people who built and ran them.

[HeevenSteven]

I didn't mean to hold Burke up to some paradigm; I was just pointing out that so few people have any idea about the workings of technology.

The author of that Times piece was amazed that Jet engines suck air in the front and blow it out the back.

[battlez]

Airbus defender. Mostly full of you know what.

[BlueZoo]

Tell THAT to the passengers on that flight! I would kiss his feet if he'd saved me butt!

[BlackJAC]

"This doesn't happen to me. I'm Chesley Sullenberger, the greatest pilot that ever lived or ever will live. Getting all my engines FODed with birds doesn't happen to me."