The new book “Fly by Wire” contends that Capt. Chesley Sullenberger wasn’t the only hero involved in landing an U.S. Airways jetliner on the Hudson River last winter. Journalist William Langewiesche writes that the unsung hero is Bernard Ziegler, a French test pilot who talked Airbus into developing “pilot-proof” airliners. Langewiesche argues that the “fly by wire” automation on the Airbus A320 meant that gliding into the Hudson didn’t require “unusual skill” by the pilots. But Sullenberger responded that the book “greatly overstates how much it mattered” that the plane was an Airbus and not a more conventional Boeing.
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8 Comments
“Fly by wire” just means an electrical or electronic interface for control with either a side-stick or yoke control. Boeing uses a yoke control for its larger aircraft, while Airbuses uses sidestick control.
Some fighter aircraft that are “fly by wire” that use side stick control are the F-16.
Pilot instincts and training, along with remaining calm under pressure are often more important than technology in an emergency.
I leave the operation of the aircraft to the aircraft commander and Captain Sullenberger is right, there is no one techonological answer that fits all problems or delivers all solutions.
Remember the first flight of the ‘fly by wire’ design at the air show! It brought the plane down in that case too, just into the ground.
In the case of the airshow crash, that pilot was foolishly demonstrating how his Airbus wouldn’t allow him stall his aircraft at near-runway level. Of course, when he ran out of runway, he didn’t have enough airpseed to clear the treetops at the end of said runway, and hit them.
That wasn’t a failure of the Airbus fly-by-wire (which worked perfectly, as the plane never stalled), but the inescapable physics of flying a jetliner into a bunch of trees.
Pilot instincts and training, along with remaining calm under pressure are often more important than technology in an emergency.
No kidding. Flight controls respond to pilot inputs; the pilot’s skill ultimately makes all the difference. Did the “fly-by-wire” design make it easier to fly than one with more conventional controls? Perhaps. That does not make Captain Sullenberger’s response to the crisis any less remarkable.
Stealth aircraft couldn’t get off the ground (or would return to it quite quickly) were it not for fly-by-wire.
Boeing makes a lot of fine airplanes.
But with this particular technology, Airbus kicked American ass.
Hometown (sorta) boosterism is fine.
But them damned SOCIALIST!!!! Europeans advanced the state of the art.
That’s not treason.
That’s reality.
There’s a key difference between the Airbus and Boeing fly-by-wire systems. The active software that runs the Airbus system won’t allow pilots to make certain kinds of errors – it overrides the pilot and prevents the error from happening in the first place (such as throttling back into a stall). The Boeing system has no such safeguards, and is a lot more passive in controlling the plane, allowing pilots more complete and direct control.
Old pilot’s joke:
Planes soon will be staffed by two: A pilot in the left seat and a big mean dog in the right. The pilot’s job is to monitor all the fancy gear, and the dog’s job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.
ThomasWitt’s explanation shows the difference between the more rigid, don’t trust people European way of thinking and the American put the right person in charge and let him run it thinking.
And while I have respected Bill Lang……’s writing for years, I think (my opinion) that it is off base on this one.
Dennis (Commercial license, instrument rating)
Dennis,
The “trust the pilot” culture is gone. The reality is that many pilots are flying on short sleep hours, are underpaid, and lack the experience that someone like Captain Sullenberger has. Beyond that, one way of looking at the Airbus system is to compare it to things like anti-lock brakes and electronic stability protection. I don’t mind having things be a little safer, as long as the technology isn’t “bleeding edge.”