Originally Posted by
I'mOffOne
It's true that a majority of the aviation incidents these days have pilot error as a contributing or primary cause. However, there is no data on how many times the airplane has a mechanical issue but is landed safely by the pilots. I'm not talking about headline news-style Hudson river landings, I'm talking about the still fairly routine mechanical failures that require physical pilot intervention such as autopilot failures, autopressurization failures, etc. These happen every day and far outnumber the now-rare accidents that have pilot error as a contributing cause.
I have to admit that I'm somewhat surprised by that. Surely such mechanical failure would be logged by the pilot, so gathering this data would be possible, at least in principle?
Seems to me that this is something that would be investigated by the sort of people who get themselves patents for 'windowless' flight decks.