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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"The thing that stands out here the most is the complete lack of control that the crew had over the plane. The crew was managing the computers rather than flying the aircraft."

Perhaps they are "Children of the Magenta":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

... and I cannot recommend this video enough.

I am not a pilot and I have no interest in flying nor any particular interest in aviation, generally ... and I find this talk to be fascinating.

EDIT: you can jump to 3:35 where he gives a specific example of a situation where pilots need to choose between automation dependency and dropping down a level of automation. He's a really good speaker and you can tell the audience is very engaged.

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Great video, thanks.

I find it weird that we learn so little about aviation when the industry has so much to teach us. The checklist manifesto was a great attempt to try to implement checklists in the hospital and other places, but from CRM to workload management there is so much to benefit from what the airline industry has pioneered.

As someone who works in the airline industry I find it infuriating when other industries don’t match my expectations. I saw behind the curtain at a couple of medium sized online retailers. The lack of process and procedure was just astounding to me. I know some airline pilots have had success in consulting in hospitals but maybe there exists a broader market for that service.

You can get a way with a lot when accidents don't cost a billion dollars.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to get senior management to engage. If it's just a botched order they let the cowboys be cowboys and consider it a cost of business. Rigorous process requires too much painful self-reflection, so it only happens maybe after they get sued. Even in hospitals, death from improper dosing is surprisingly high.

Regulators play an important role in life safety situations. Beware of regulatory capture (737MAX not getting new type certification).

The closest thing I can think of is HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) in the food industry.

There's another version of the video here with restored audio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WITLR_qSPXk

Might be easier to watch for anyone using a device with crappy speakers.

If you do find this video fascinating, I'd encourage you to take a few flight lessons, especially if you find an instructor that can be on board with your goal of not really learning to fly per se but exploring some of these more nuanced issues around task saturation and automation -- on several single seater prop planes today you have just as many avionics bells and whistles like you would in an airliner. As I've learned to fly, the mix of psychology, HCI, systems design, etc., has been awesome to contemplate. Nothing I've ever done has made me so keenly aware of my own way of processing information, how to deal with stressors, etc. It's an absolute blast, and if you have any interest in any of these areas and are so aware of it as to really like the magenta video, I promise you you'll like it too!

Wow, that is a great video thank you for sharing!

Still watching it but wanted to comment.

So taking this away from aviation,the reactions and issues he shares are exactly my concerns with self driving cars.

As I went through my pilot training (even for just single engine piston planes) there was so much focus on decision-making and interpreting automation and info from the plane that it absolutely has made me even more skeptical about the current state of self-driving cars. In the flight world, you get trained so much about how to properly monitor systems and how to be a step ahead of it at all times, and how to react to failures, etc.... It seems like we're completely not in the vicinity of that kind of thinking with self-driving cars... its as though for cars we are to just trust the automation and the law of large numbers will take care of things assuming it is safe enough!

This video is excellent, thanks for sharing!

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