Comment by filleduchaos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by filleduchaos | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure how focus is a vague term - I thought in this context it pretty clearly means a state of concentration/active attention.

And I'd flip it and say that you don't understand what I'm trying to say, which is that while flying routinely you would have to lose focus in order to end up in a situation where you are blindsided by a signal and need to act on it immediately, while when you are driving routinely you can be doing everything completely right and be paying the utmost attention and still need to react near-instantaneously to prevent disaster on a routine basis.

In fact, bringing up sudden equipment failure just sort of reinforces my point. The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that.

Or to put it another way, flying prioritises a slower and more methodical approach to operation than driving does - prioritises conscious over unconscious decision-making. I think this article by a pilot (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot...) explains my point quite a bit better than I can.

It is as if you did not read the final paragraph of my previous post, from which I think it should be clear that I am neither misunderstanding nor disputing the broad thrust of your position (though, personally, I am not routinely in situations requiring near-instantaneous reactions by the driver in order to prevent disaster, either as a driver or as a passenger in a road vehicle. I can see, however, that for anyone who prioritizes unconscious over conscious decision-making, this could be the case.)

What I am saying is an addendum to that broad point: situations do generally develop more slowly in the cruise stage of flight, but in those cases where they develop without the pilot being aware of that happening (which they can, and do in a small but not trivial number of cases), then they can present a situation requiring a near-instantaneous reaction to avoid disaster (if that opportunity has not already passed.)

By excluding takeoffs and landings, you are, of course, stacking the deck towards your point, especially if you take this to include flying in congested terminal airspace, particularly in IMC. By the time we exclude cases where the pilots are not doing everything right (and we had better exclude cases where other pilots, ATC and other external persons whose actions or failure to act could create a dangerous situation, and mechanical or systems failures that affect airplane controlability or structural integrity - all of these have led to disasters or near disasters), we have a point that is well-nigh unassailable, but bearing little relevance to the question of why airplanes crash.

The same goes for the linked article: it is is mostly right but there are exceptions. Given that it is from AOPA, I think it is worth noting that the aphorism (as stated from time to time by general aviation pilots) that "the most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport" is statistically false for general aviation itself (it may well be true for airline flight in many parts of the world.)

> The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that.

Let's see, a pilot flying in the yellow hits turbulence followed by a wind shear, and pulls up...

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