Just read a report that made me rethink the whole 'glass cockpit' safety boost

I was looking through an NTSB study from 2022 about general aviation accidents, and it said planes with glass panels had a 7% higher rate of loss of control incidents in certain conditions. I always thought more tech meant less pilot error, but the data shows it can create new problems if people rely on it too much. Has anyone else seen pilots get too focused on the screens instead of flying the plane?

4 comments

4 Comments

ward.anna1d ago

Yeah, that report lines up with what I've seen at my local field. It's not just loss of control, but people get stuck in a mode where they're managing systems instead of flying. They'll fixate on programming a route change while the plane gets slow and mushy, especially in the pattern. Do you think basic scan habits are getting lost?

taylor_patel1d ago

Isn't it more about how we're taught now? The training pushes button pushing from day one, so the scan just never gets built into muscle memory. You see it when guys are heads down in the cockpit on a clear day, totally missing that they're drifting off altitude. Maybe we need to go back to making people hand fly more often, even in the fancy planes.

kimw571d ago

Saw a study, @ward.anna, that basically said the same thing.

the_alex1d ago

That's exactly what worries me about all this tech.