A general aviation magazine with pieces by pilots on flying, aircraft engines, safety, and personal experience in the cockpit.
HN links it mainly for the $20-an-hour Cessna 172 engine experiment and its update, which commenters note ended sadly; the author still runs Corsair Power.
There is relatively well-know presentation from 1997 by American Airlines captain Warren Van Der Burgh called "Children of Magenta" that talked about the risk of crew being too dependent on the guiding magenta-colored lines of the autopilot on their screens:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
* https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/
* https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050104/13rRUxASutL
Some of the pros and cons of cockpit automation:
* https://www.skybrary.aero/articles/cockpit-automation-advantages-and-safety-challenges
Generally automation exists on a spectrum, and the pilot should be able to select its level depending on the circumstances:
> In Van’s presentation he describes three levels of automation:
> *The pilot manually flying the aircraft.
> *The pilot using the flight director, autopilot, and autopilot modes to fly the aircraft for a short period of time. For example: Heading select, Flight Level Change, Vertical Speed, Indicated Airspeed, etc.
> *The pilot using the FMS to command the autopilot to fly the aircraft for hours at a time.
* https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09/stepping-down-in-automation-the-real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/
I completely agree, but for a more complete analysis, we would have to consider the fatality rate for the sort of crashes in which CAPS is employed.
IIRC, Cirrus is now encouraging pilots to use CAPS in any engine failure with sufficient altitude for it to work, on account of the number of such accidents, in CAPS-equipped aircraft, where the pilot chose not to use it, and someone aboard was killed or seriously injured. This will presumably further muddy the used/saved ratio, while probably increasing the total number of saved.
In a collision situation, at least one as violent as this one, you can't be sure whether some vital control or structure has been damaged to the point where it is about to fail, so using a parachute of any sort, where feasible, seems to be the rational choice.
Quite by accident, I came across this pucker-inducing article a couple of days ago, where thre's little doubt that bailing out, if it were an option, would have been the right thing to do, even though this flight ended safely in this case.
https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/03/student-flight-control-jam/
(On second thoughts, if the pilot had a parachute, he could have attempted to free up the controls without making his situation any worse.)
This has very little to do with the plane's ability to glide. (A 737 glides just fine, if a bit steep for my taste).
In that particular emergency, the control surfaces prevent it from gliding. You can even have issues on a Cessna - loss of elevator is not fun.[1]
It's not about "denying physics", it's about having insufficient redundancy[2] and improper amount of control from MCAS - 3 times more than the FAA approved: [3]
No plane is 100% safe. Boeing made this one worse for the sake of saving money - the physics work out just fine, and gliding ability is not really impacted. (But I don't think it'd be a normal response - I can't imagine a pilot thinking "oh, I'm getting a stall warning with nose down at 4,000 feet, I know, I'll cut power and glide".)
[1] https://airfactsjournal.com/2018/12/elevator-failure-at-4500-feet-in-a-cessna-150/
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lack-of-redundancies-on-737-max-system-has-baffled-even-those-who-worked-on-the-jet/
[3] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
Some people don't like knee boards because you have to move your head up-down-up-down to use it, and that can be disorienting, especially in poor visibility conditions (when external visual references are minimal). There are other types of mounts available, such as suction mounts, that mount the device closer to eye level, but while robust these are not as secure as built-in equipment. The overheat problem is real as well, but having your iPad shut down in flight is nowhere near as big a deal as having it jam in the rudder pedals.
Further reading: https://airfactsjournal.com/2018/10/how-spatial-disorientation-can-trap-pilots/
I just want to say I love what you are doing, you are solving a problem close to my heart. This is the sort of hard tech company that YC (and SV) should invest more in, not silly SaaS and ChatGPT wrappers. That being said, after fly by wire, would you be interested in tackling the GA engine economics problem? They are closely linked. If you solve that, the TAM for your product expands massively, and your exit opportunities are no longer limited to just being acquihired by Garmin.
https://airfactsjournal.com/2022/10/the-20-hour-cessna-172-experiment-update/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34728405
Another reason there are so many Cirrus accidents is that in an effort to improve its safety record, Cirrus began advising its pilots to use the parachute whenever in doubt. I don't mean this as a knock in the slightest -- the statistics are very convincing that this is saving lives[1]. But a funny side effect is that you see a bunch of accidents where someone parachutes a Cirrus into a field that any other airplane would have just landed in.
[1] https://airfactsjournal.com/2016/08/whats-right-cirrus-pilots