There is an art to flying an aircraft that no amount of computer learning and algorithms can replace. If you are not feeling it, you are not flying. You are a passenger.
The issue of technology versus technique is a critical discussion to have, because we are at, or perhaps have already crossed, a computer-generated line in the sand.
Aircraft carrying hundreds of passengers have operated for a while now without the direct input of their pilots on the controls. Flight crews input pressures that are translated by computers into signals sent to servos. The day of DC (direct cable) flying is mostly over for the transport piloting crowd.
These changes—I am not sure I want to call them “advances”—over the years have led from a three-person cockpit with a flight engineer overseeing the aircraft systems to a pair of pilots overseen by computer monitoring systems.
When I was a flight engineer (and I know, here comes the old man with his stories about how great the past was) … anyway, when I was a flight engineer, I noticed and brought quite a few errors to the attention of the other pilots that might have led to an accident. They, in turn, kept me from running the fuel tanks dry through my ineptitude.
Issues like flap and stabilizer trim settings, power adjustments, and abnormals, and just plain piloting stuff like traffic and dangerous airspeed and sink rate deviations.
Don’t you find it funny that the discussion after the Air India crash was that we needed a video camera on board to see what occurred to kill those people? Perhaps another set of eyes connected to a human brain, in the form of a flight engineer, would have been more valuable than a video record and could have saved the day.
Of course, the direction of modern computer-generated aviation and journalism lies in utilizing fewer people, not more. For airliners, they are suggesting a one-pilot or no-pilot cockpit. Most newspapers in the country have fewer human reporters and rely on regurgitated content from the media company’s “mother ship” computers.
It has been a trend lately in flying to talk a lot about the need for “stick and rudder skills” while at the same time touting new automation that would take the “dangerous” (read “skilled”) part out of the hands of the people who always arrive at the crash site first during an accident—the pilots.
We live in a world now where experienced pilots and pilot journalists are in short supply. Other professionals, such as air traffic controllers and veteran weather forecasters, are also scarce.
If we turned our gaze away from our computers for a moment and stopped listening to the disembodied voice of an AI-generated sales machine, we could look up and see a sunny sky in need of a human touch in the form of aviation artists.
I know that this passage of time to arrive at artful competence requires patience, and no airline and many media outlets feel that they have the luxury of trusting humanity to make art, flying or otherwise, but maybe, for humanity, they need to suck it up and try. Art, in both aviation and journalism, was created by humans for humans. An auto-landing never feels as good as doing it yourself, and a bot cannot write a truly informative and artful aviation article. A bot might get most of the facts right, but will always miss the feel, smell, and emotion of flying.
So, today you are stuck with me—an aging human with around 20,000 hours and 50 years of flying experience to offer in the form of smart-assiness, snark, and heartfelt comments instead of a bullet point article generated by a bot. Stick around, I’ve got more to say, and I am delighted that Russ let me join you here at Avbrief.org.
Mr. Garrison, great article as always. I’m glad to see that you followed Russ. I was hoping you would.
Thanks Jeff!
Same here! Your old man stories are much appreciated.
Thank you Jason. My grandkids are sick of my stories so it is nice to have a place to tell them.
As a practitioner of both writing and flying Ill never want to turn either over to a computer. A human dedicated to either cause will do their damndest to get it right. A computer will only respond emotionlessly to the inputs it is given. A poor landing is one to learn from, a great landing is one to savor. Navigating a pattern while reacting both consciously and subconsciously to the invisible eddies and updrafts is as much art as it is skill, making it a human experience. Even when I droned the length of Illinois, as bored by it from the air as I am when I traverse it by car, I never longed for an autopilot to engage. Instead, I marveled that I, a human being, was airborne in a machine of my own making.
Kerry, I get and agree with your point about autopilots but I often like letting them fly the plane while I eat a first class meal or a left over ice cream sundae. Thanks for the note. kg
Don’t let them change Kitplanes, or drive you away from it.
In an article contending generative AI is not worth it, the son of a friend of mine wrote “I don’t know if I believe in such a thing as a soul, but the times I have come closest to believing have been when I’m in the presence of a work of human creativity.” Yes Kevin there is an art to flying and if you’re not feeling it you’re not flying,, and yes that translates to journalism as well.Thank you for pointing that out during this particular transition from the recent venue to AVBrief. Just maybe though, the less smart-ashiness and snark, the more impactful the human generated heartfelt comments will be.
Sorry, John. Smart-assiness got me where I am today and snark has paid a lot of bills. Remember: Everybody likes a little ass, but nobody likes a smart ass.
Feel. Computers/algorithms/AI don’t and can’t.
Most humans don’t develop feel in whatever vehicle they operate. Those who’ve grown up feeling flow over a sailboat’s rudder and sails or drivers experienced in snow or racetracks develop respect for non-linear vehicle feedback/response that eludes most of the driving population, for the average uninterested driver, a computer control is probably an improvement for a task they are ill-suited to and leads them to their same faith for aircraft.
Computers do not stay ahead of the airplane, they do keep up very well. An engaged human will avoid issues before they occur i.e. smart enough to avoid need to demonstrate their superior skill.
Those that are enamored with tech over feel are usually the one who “feel” telephone poles while texting.
Kevin! Welcome to the Dark Side!
Having grown up flying a J-3 Cub and Schweizer 2-33 and reading Richard Bach, I naturally thought that flying was more art than science. Then I met the Airbus. The Airbus comes standard with a side stick and moveable thrust levers and can, should the need arise, be flown by hand, like the Cub. But if a jet had “druthers”, it would prefer to be left alone on autopilot to fly the way it was designed. So as the Airbus and I got to know each other, I would turn on its automation and let it teach me how to fly it. As I observed, I would learn, how some engineer in Europe translated what I considered art into digital science. “Oh, that’s why you do it that way”. For all its “Control Laws” and “protections” a fly-by-wire airplane differs from a conventional airplane in that it always remains in trim. Watching the trim wheel move gave insight into balancing the 4-forces of flight that I used to teach in every first lesson as an instructor. No, it still has no insight of its own as the auto thrust will remind you on a gusty day or in mountain wave, so the pilot never fully becomes the passenger. But not unlike the artist who labors over how to make a glob of blue paint on a horsehair brush represent the fascinating ever changing reflections of the ocean, the pilot blends the tangible with the intangible and masters that aluminum tube full of precious loved ones, Jet-A and Biscoff cookies.
Thank you, Kevin. You and Russ were the best part of AvWeb in recent years. I’m so glad you joined Russ here. If the tech billionaires think bot friends are a cure for loneliness, I guess it should come as no surprise that they think flying and writing about flying are better left to the AI of bots.
Great to have Kevin here too. No automation and stick and rudder skills is one reason I fly sailplanes. Of course, the same can be said for a bare bones Cub.
Kevin I am glad you joined Russ as well. You made me think about the relationship between pilots and their aircraft. I think most pilots form an intimate relationship with their aircraft. I happen to think that relationship is really important because if you love an airplane you will notice the small things. Maybe its a different hum in cruise or the gear take a bit longer than normal to cycle. The airplane will talk to you and good pilots listen and will take note. Like Capt. Malcolm Reynolds said in the movie Serenity: “Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought’a fall down.”.
I’m not at all surprised how quickly people are trading their AvWeb subscriptions for one with AvBrief. Russ and his crew, and Paul before him, always had plenty to say about everything and I’m betting that will continue.
As far as the old guard goes – having worked for him for a week before he fired me too at AirVenture a few years back – him and his AI team won’t fail soon, but I predict they will in the long run.
As Kevin said, what I’ve learned over decades of flying airplanes for other people, is there’s always money to be made by those who covet greenbacks, but they’ll never really understand the guts of a great flight or a great tale, because that demands a soul. And those people are left hopelessly lacking on that front. Best of luck guys.
‘We’re Getting the Band Back Together’
Looks like the old hangar is getting (piloted) repopulated, and that’s just dandy.
I know this may make me a dartboard for some of you, but that’s fine, a good discussion needs a little turbulence. Kevin is right, there’s an art to flying no machine will ever own. If you can’t feel what the airplane is telling you, you’re just along for the ride.
But not all tech works against that art. I’ve flown from NDB needles and DME arcs to WAAS LPV, synthetic vision, glass panels, and some other brain cell burning stuff. Used right, they make me safer and more efficient.
The trap is over-dependence on technology. Air France 447 wasn’t an AI failure, it was a crew that lost control of a perfectly good airplane when automation quit and their manual flying skills failed. Bad ergonomics and confusing system design didn’t help, but the deeper issue was being unready when the techno-magic stopped.
AI in journalism carries the same risk. Letting it run unchecked is like giving the autopilot the controls and walking away. It’s a tool, just like any avionics platform, and learning how to use the tool is a must. But the pilot, or the writer, stays in command, and stays current, competent, and proficient.
I didn’t survive 50-plus years of flying, 25 as a full-time instructor, to become a passenger at the yoke or the keyboard. Stick and rudder still matter, just like brain and pen matter.
My hand never moved to open my box of darts, Raf.
Seems to me this change in flight path was more about corporate will and money than AI anyway. The idea of understanding what moves someone to value tools over people is the only subject worth consideration for me on this.
Keeping up with the speed of changes from technology might actually be the greatest challenge we will face soon. Talking to my 30 yr old son and some of his friends, even they seem very stressed about it. And they’re always using it – for now.
Nice to see you here, Dave.
What a wonderful bunch of comments. An article in themselves.
What an excellent article, pretty much sums up what’s in the air these days. No pun intended.
I am basically just a blunt color crayon flyer compared to many here. I am trying to appreciate the art and take it in.
I really like this new AVBrief site- the articles and writers views- as well as the comments posted by readers. Thank you all, most thanks of course to Russ for making it happen.