Automation can also go very far in saving lives. We hear about fatal plane crashes in the news, but don’t really hear about the times that automation and computer systems catch or report a pilot overspending the aircraft, making an unsafe maneuver, deviating from standard operating procedures, or touching down too hard.

The Boeing situation is an interesting. With the Max, Boeing broke a core tenant of aircraft design that’s been a major factor in making airliners so safe. The MCAS system’s inputs (from angle of attack sensors) were not redundant. They should have been at least doubly-redundant given that the ultimate design of MCAS could pitch the aircraft down to such a degree that the pilot could not overcome it using their own control inputs. While Boeing probably should have redesigned its airframe instead of adding MCAS, it wasn’t a fundamentally bad idea to employ automation. The system behavior changed, but the company failed to re-assess the safety implications.

All Airbus products are fly-by-wire and there’s always some level of automation in play. It degrades to employ less protections when system faults occur. There’s a lesson there for Boeing!