Automation Vulnerabilities

Although difficult flight path–management tasks are handled routinely by professional pilots operating highly automated jets, the most demanding situations still tend to significantly increase the pilots’ task complexity and workload, says a U.S. working group of subject matter experts. For example, in cases in which air traffic control (ATC) suddenly issued an amended clearance/vector changing the preplanned flight path — say, for temporary deviation from a complex instrument flight procedure — some pilots told the working group they struggled at times to recover the optimum flight path by relying solely on modes of the automated systems. Moreover, complete or partial reversion to manual flight operations to resolve brief confusion could be problematic, the working group’s analyses showed.

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