What a poor design. Pilots should have a hard "manual control" switch that turns control completely to the pilots.
A friend of mine from childhood became a top expert in formal verification, and got a contract many years back to help Airbus perform formal verification on their control software. I don't know many details, but according to my friend's father, he would never fly on an Airbus jet after this experience.
A pilot friend told a story of some pilot friends of his who were piloting an Airbus in Canada, many years back, who couldn't get the jet to give control back and get out of a holding pattern to land. They had to wake up engineers in France in the middle of the night, who told them to take a hammer to certain fuses or breakers, and let them regain control.
From a UI point of view, the control system and displays in the Airbus are a disaster. For instance, the pilots in the Air France plane that stalled over the pacific couldn't figure out that the plane was stalled for several minutes before it was too late to correct, with all of the displays in front of them.
A friend of mine from childhood became a top expert in formal verification, and got a contract many years back to help Airbus perform formal verification on their control software. I don't know many details, but according to my friend's father, he would never fly on an Airbus jet after this experience.
A pilot friend told a story of some pilot friends of his who were piloting an Airbus in Canada, many years back, who couldn't get the jet to give control back and get out of a holding pattern to land. They had to wake up engineers in France in the middle of the night, who told them to take a hammer to certain fuses or breakers, and let them regain control.
From a UI point of view, the control system and displays in the Airbus are a disaster. For instance, the pilots in the Air France plane that stalled over the pacific couldn't figure out that the plane was stalled for several minutes before it was too late to correct, with all of the displays in front of them.