NM

But he has swapped camps. He has Capatained QF 767s and 747s (even ones with missing exterior panels ) and is now a QF A380 Captain. So who better to understand the differences?

number_6

The man-machine interface is my own area of interest and Airbus happens to have done some pioneering work in this. The way pilots' fly an airbus is quite fascinating, and while much of what Airbus did is logical, it has also led to some stunning failures. Numerous controlled flight into terrain due to problems in the man-machine interface; including one by the chief Airbus test pilot, arguably the most experienced Airbus pilot in the world (this was the first A330 crash at Toulouse). The Strasbourg CFIT was due to a switch being off by 1 position, selecting the wrong flight mode. Lots of lessons in hardware, software and interface design. Interestingly the A380 seems to have introduced a whole new stream of design errors, including back to the most basic of computer architectural errors. Most of the work by Airbus is superb and commendable, with great planes and systems, but it reflects the difficulty of managing complexity that these problems continue to occur.