(Image: Simon Coates)

Flight -Technology, Safety and Humanity.

There is no disputing the enhancements in safety that technology has brought to aviation. One only has to consider the advent of Ground Proximity Warning Systems (GPWS) to appreciate the number of lives potentially saved by technology. However, as I sit perched at 38,000 feet with the Head Up Display before my eyes and the radar scanning the horizon for weather, there is something deeper that yearns for the simpler style of flight.

It is a passion that has never left me and calls me aloft whenever time permits. A spinning propeller and minimal dials returns flight to the days of olde. An era when the “feel” of flight played a role and stick and rudder skill was needed to soar smoothly about the sky. Today, autopilots are engaged early after take-off and disconnected late on approach with automation and fly-by-wire filling the hours in between.

Even in modern light aircraft “TV screens” have replaced the dials and automation has attempted to override airmanship – but this is a challenge that is fraught with danger. Accident reports from around the world have shown that an ever-increasing reliance upon the automation has left pilots falling short when the systems fail them. Loss of control accidents resulting from a pilot desperately trying to re-engage an autopilot or program an instrument approach when the priority was to fly the aircraft.

Aviate – Navigate – Communicate.

Fundamentally, these systems are tools to support the pilot and not the other way around. They are not a substitute for the ability to fly the aircraft, rather they are there to supplement that task. Unfortunately, this over-reliance on automation can lead to an over reliance on things not going wrong. And as we know – technology can fail, or at the very least, be a distraction.

This challenge of the modern cockpit is somewhat in parallel to everyday life where technology is eroding our humanity. Communication, “friends”, and social interactions have all been changed by those devices in our hands and backpacks. Those devices also fail and serve to distract. And when they do, we need to be human once more and relate to one another in real and meaningful ways. It is a skill that we should retain and practice and not only call upon when technology lets us down.

So, I suspect that I will always seek solace in the spinning propeller at altitudes where the detail of earth below is still readily visible. Where coastlines are places of beach umbrellas and breaking waves rather than impersonal yellow lines that separate blue from green. I will be thankful for the technology that keeps our skies safe but I will equally appreciate the simplicity of flight….and life.