Safety
As aircraft operation becomes more dependent on glass cockpit systems, flight crews must be trained to deal with possible failures. In one glass-cockpit aircraft, the Airbus A320, fifty incidents of glass-cockpit blackout have occurred. On 25 January 2008 United Airlines Flight 731 experienced a serious glass-cockpit blackout, losing half of the ECAM displays as well as all radios, transponders, TCAS, and attitude indicators. Partially due to good weather and daylight conditions, the pilots were able to land successfully at Newark Airport without radio contact. Airbus has offered an optional fix, which the US NTSB has suggested to the US FAA as mandatory, but the FAA has yet to make it a requirement. A preliminary NTSB factsheet is available.
In 2010, the NTSB published a study done on 8,000 general aviation light aircraft. The study found that, although aircraft equipped with glass cockpits had a lower overall accident rate, they also had a larger chance of being involved in a fatal accident. The NTSB Chairman said in response to the study:
Training is clearly one of the key components to reducing the accident rate of light planes equipped with glass cockpits, and this study clearly demonstrates the life and death importance of appropriate training on these complex systems... While the technological innovations and flight management tools that glass cockpit equipped airplanes bring to the general aviation community should reduce the number of fatal accidents, we have not—unfortunately—seen that happen.Read more about this topic: Glass Cockpit
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“There is always safety in valor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If we can find a principle to guide us in the handling of the child between nine and eighteen months, we can see that we need to allow enough opportunity for handling and investigation of objects to further intellectual development and just enough restriction required for family harmony and for the safety of the child.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)