At Doomed Flight’s Helm, Pilots May Have Been Overwhelmed in Seconds

There is, but there will always be a dependency on sensors to feed the input values into these funcitons. Modern flight computers are far better at pretty much any flying task than humans. Other than communicating wiht traffic control and raising/lowering the flaps and gear (none of which are absolutely necessary), a modern airliner can take off, cruise and land entirely on its own, with no human intervention.

I agree that it's probably a combination of bad maintenance, a not quite perfectly fault-tolerant system design and human error of the pilots. One factor that hasn't been mentioned is that even the newest versions of the 737 contain ancient, obsolete technology. A newer airliner will probably have more redundant and more fault-tolerant systems.

Besides that the problem of having a very clever autopilot is that it makes it a lot harder for humans to react appropriately when it messes up, because they both don't expect it and are more likely to panic. The Tesla autopilot accidents are good examples of that, those have seen would've been easily avoided by a human but because the autopilot was usually fine on its own the driver didn't react quickly enough.

An other much more tragic example is the Air France Flight 447 crash in the Atlantic where the autopilot detected a faulty sensor and disengaged and the two pilots managed to get the otherwise perfectly functioning plane to crash into the ocean because they basically freaked out and failed to understand what was going on.

That's a strange paradox in a way, as we move from fully manual to fully automated we have a strange "uncanny valley" for safety where the computer is clever enough to handle most situations which lulls the human operator into a false sense of safety. The operator pays less attention, eventually starts losing their skills and reflexes and then at some point, maybe years later, the computer messes up and you have a handful of seconds (if even that) to remember what you're supposed to do.

On the other hand a simple but predictable autopilot might not be quite as autonomous but at least it's easy to understand and anticipate, and it forces humans to remain attentive.

I haven't read too much into it but I suspect this system was part of an envelope protection system designed to stop the pilots from being able to fly outside of the aircraft's performance limits. Once a fix is applied I'm sure this system will save many more aircraft than it harms.

However, if the computer is found to have initiated the pitch downwards, then the same failure could happen to any aircraft of this type, even if well maintained, if the sensors or computer simply begin to malfunction while the plane is in the air. Absent pilot error, the worst that should happen is a reversion to manual control.

What concerns me is that any software flaws with the aircraft will not be addressed until the problem reoccurs with another more reputable airline in the future, because Lion Air appear so guilty in this case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and...

A reasonable response in that situation might be to hit the big red button, removing any question about the behavior of the flight controls. It may not have been enough in this scenario, as the pilots didn't seem to be paying appropriate attention to the angle of attack indicator, which was apparently functioning and clearly indicating a stall, but it may have put them in the right frame of mind to correct the problem.

I think poor working conditions in the Asian textile industry is a relevant analogy.

A textile factory collapses due to inexcusabe management decisions or incompetence. The management pulled the trigger, so to speak. However, it's the abusive dynamic of the free-market that incentivised management to cut costs to sustain the business. If they had not met the price offered by the big brands, the contract would go to someone else, i.e. there's an abundance of low-cost supply.

In the Asian textile market, the manufacturers, working at thin margins, are incentivised to cut costs to unreasonable levels, because they'd lose business. The local regulators are incentivised to not regulate, because the demand would move to another jurisdiction.

My point is that sometimes, there's two sides to the guilty coin. There's the isolated incident and the general atmosphere that breeds those incidents.

I can not relate this to the topic of Asian airlines, but you might find this interesting nonetheless.

The whole "sensors were broken" thing should never be a reason for a plane to crash if this alternate mode of flying is possible.