Kev writes:

On the one hand, you could argue that with say, the Airbus computer
overrides, even a non-pilot passenger could handle the sidestick and
throttles and never stall in the air.

The flip side is that, with Airbus, even an experienced pilot can
crash. These are the unavoidable and interlocked advantages and
disadvantages of fly-by-wire systems that have no full overrides.

On the other hand, I'm always reminded of that story in one of the
pilot mags a few years back, about the fully loaded 747 taking off from
SFO. It lost an engine right away, and the young co-pilot tried to use
the yoke instead of the rudder to straighten out. This popped up a
spoiler on one side (kills lift so the plane banks) and the plane
stopped climbing. The pilot and a jump-seater nearly had a heart
attack, and yelled at the co-pilot to get off the yoke and use rudder.
They missed a mountain by mere feet. Moral of the story? I dunno

How had the co-pilot been trained? A simulator would have behaved
just like the real thing, so that could not be the source of his
error.

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