Quote:
Originally Posted by Akrapovic
And the pilot and plane example completely ignores what I even said. I never said a plane flies itself. I said a computer provides the link through electronics and without a computer, the connection is no longer there. I never said the computer flies it, just pointed out that the computer transmits the pilots actions. It's one of those lovely well known facts that the Eurofighter cannot actually fly without the computer and would just fall out of the sky.
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I'm sure one or two on here are "real" pilots and could add more; however as a matter of interest I did a one hour "flight" on a modern 747 simulator with an instructor who was a recently retired 30 year Virgin Atlantic pilot. It's hard to overstate how interesting this was and I'd recommend it to anyone but one thing I did learn is that while the crew manage the systems, deal with emergencies and spent a lot of time talking to ATC they do precious little flying and indeed could do even less, essentially once the wheels leave the ground they can just tell the autopilot how high, what speed, how fast to ascend/descend, what heading to fly etc. until the aircraft is rolling gently down the runway and it's time to turn off onto the taxiway to the terminal.
Of course they do have to do a small amount of manual flying occasionally esp. landings to stay current and therefore qualified.
I don't think this has much to do with driving a car though, the key difference being that aircraft are not generally in close proximity, you can't jink three feet to the right or fumble when reaching for the brake pedal and cause an instant accident.