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The Dangers of Automation in Airliners: Accidents Waiting to Happen
A highly contemporary and relevant examination of the subject in light of recent events surrounding the Boeing 737 MAX.
Automation in aviation can be a lifesaver, expertly guiding a plane and its passengers through stormy weather to a safe landing. Or it can be a murderer, crashing an aircraft and killing all on board in the mistaken belief that it is doing the right thing.
Lawrence Sperry invented the autopilot just ten years after the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903. But progress was slow for the next three decades. Then came the end of the Second World War and the jet age. That’s when the real trouble began.
Aviation automation has been pushed to its limits, with pilots increasingly relying on it. Autopilot, autothrottle, autoland, flight management systems, air data systems, inertial guidance systems. All these systems are only as good as their inputs which, incredibly, can go rogue. Even the automation itself is subject to unpredictable failure. Can automation account for every possible eventuality?
And what of the pilots? They began flight training with their hands on the throttle and yoke, and feet on the rudder pedals. Then they reached the pinnacle of their careers – airline pilot – and suddenly they were going hours without touching the controls other than for a few minutes on takeoff and landing. Are their skills eroding? Is their training sufficient to meet the demands of today’s planes?
The Dangers of Automation in Airliners delves deeply into these questions. You’ll be in the cockpits of the two doomed Boeing 737 MAXs, the Airbus A330 lost over the South Atlantic, and the Bombardier Q400 that stalled over Buffalo. You’ll discover exactly why a Boeing 777 smacked into a seawall, missing the runway on a beautiful summer morning. And you’ll watch pilots battling – sometimes winning and sometimes not – against automation run amok. This book also investigates the human factors at work. You’ll learn why pilots might overlook warnings or ignore cockpit alarms. You’ll observe automation failing to alert aircrews of what they crucially need to know while fighting to save their planes and their passengers.
The future of safe air travel depends on automation. This book tells its story.
Automation in aviation can be a lifesaver, expertly guiding a plane and its passengers through stormy weather to a safe landing. Or it can be a murderer, crashing an aircraft and killing all on board in the mistaken belief that it is doing the right thing.
Lawrence Sperry invented the autopilot just ten years after the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903. But progress was slow for the next three decades. Then came the end of the Second World War and the jet age. That’s when the real trouble began.
Aviation automation has been pushed to its limits, with pilots increasingly relying on it. Autopilot, autothrottle, autoland, flight management systems, air data systems, inertial guidance systems. All these systems are only as good as their inputs which, incredibly, can go rogue. Even the automation itself is subject to unpredictable failure. Can automation account for every possible eventuality?
And what of the pilots? They began flight training with their hands on the throttle and yoke, and feet on the rudder pedals. Then they reached the pinnacle of their careers – airline pilot – and suddenly they were going hours without touching the controls other than for a few minutes on takeoff and landing. Are their skills eroding? Is their training sufficient to meet the demands of today’s planes?
The Dangers of Automation in Airliners delves deeply into these questions. You’ll be in the cockpits of the two doomed Boeing 737 MAXs, the Airbus A330 lost over the South Atlantic, and the Bombardier Q400 that stalled over Buffalo. You’ll discover exactly why a Boeing 777 smacked into a seawall, missing the runway on a beautiful summer morning. And you’ll watch pilots battling – sometimes winning and sometimes not – against automation run amok. This book also investigates the human factors at work. You’ll learn why pilots might overlook warnings or ignore cockpit alarms. You’ll observe automation failing to alert aircrews of what they crucially need to know while fighting to save their planes and their passengers.
The future of safe air travel depends on automation. This book tells its story.
- GenresAviation
288 pages, Hardcover
Published November 23, 2020
18 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 2, 2021
Chilling and thrilling! I read this book after reading three murder mysteries in a row, and this book was no less spine chilling! It is not for the faint hearted- I could feel myself worrying about the issues in the book the next time I board a flight. I also felt myself in awe of what all the pilots go through while in the cockpit. Jack J. Hersch’s writing is very persuasive in making the point that automation is all pervasive in airplanes but it can lead to far more dangers because of the complacency it develops. I can easily agree with him since that is the common issue with anything that seems to make life easy - it has a flip side. AI, technology etc are all tools which help with a particular purpose but can lead to side consequences that are crucial to know.
Jack does well to get to the details of the birth of the automation from the early gyroscope invention to the latest airplanes and their deep automation. At places he also explains a lot of the technicalities of the plane and the way it flies and is controlled, which I agree is needed to inform the readers to be able to fully appreciate the concerns he later raises, but I was a bit too bored to really read and understand those portions, I was more keen to see his analysis and description of the crashes - which he does beautifully (maybe this was my problem coming from murder novels!). He does a good job of showing cases where crashes could be attributed to automation in the planes. He also dives into good research which shows how human factors are impacted by such automation and this makes his case stronger. He also shows cases where crashes were averted in spite of automation trying to play spoilsport! I like it that he also covers at the end of the book the landing of the flight on the Hudson River by Capt Sully.
He does well to also continually appreciate the fact that he is only talking about a tiny slice of the aviation industry - there are far many more good pilots and benefits that automation has brought. But when emergencies happen, it is the point where things can go completely wrong.
I loved reading the book, about a topic I had no clue about but was always curious about. The book makes you think and I attribute that to the great writing and arguments provided therein. Highly recommended read in my view!
Jack does well to get to the details of the birth of the automation from the early gyroscope invention to the latest airplanes and their deep automation. At places he also explains a lot of the technicalities of the plane and the way it flies and is controlled, which I agree is needed to inform the readers to be able to fully appreciate the concerns he later raises, but I was a bit too bored to really read and understand those portions, I was more keen to see his analysis and description of the crashes - which he does beautifully (maybe this was my problem coming from murder novels!). He does a good job of showing cases where crashes could be attributed to automation in the planes. He also dives into good research which shows how human factors are impacted by such automation and this makes his case stronger. He also shows cases where crashes were averted in spite of automation trying to play spoilsport! I like it that he also covers at the end of the book the landing of the flight on the Hudson River by Capt Sully.
He does well to also continually appreciate the fact that he is only talking about a tiny slice of the aviation industry - there are far many more good pilots and benefits that automation has brought. But when emergencies happen, it is the point where things can go completely wrong.
I loved reading the book, about a topic I had no clue about but was always curious about. The book makes you think and I attribute that to the great writing and arguments provided therein. Highly recommended read in my view!
July 28, 2021
This is exactly what I was in the mood for: a book about airplanes for the layperson fascinated by disaster. I imagine pilots will also enjoy it, but you certainly don’t have to have any experience to follow along. Jack Hersch assumes you do not. (I, for one, hope any pilot on a plane I’m on already knows this material. If you can’t tell, I am not a pilot myself… but my dad did learn to fly small aircraft in his 20s, so I’ll have to update this review with his take on the book if he ends up reading it.)
My main worry was that this book would read like a dense report. It does not. The author takes a conversational tone. Yes, he does get technical and there are diagrams. But he’s also aware of reader confusion and explains things better and more thoroughly than any plane crash documentary I can recall seeing.
In addition to blow-by-blow analysis of his chosen crashes, he also steps back to give helpful and fascinating context on the history of the technology and the airline industry. I found the amount of this kind of info to be just right: brief bios of the key figures involved, basic explanations of the tech, maybe a fun anecdote thrown in, and then moving on. This will surely give you a deeper appreciation of the inventions involved in making modern aviation happen—and happen (mostly) without incident.
As a pilot himself, Hersch is also well equipped to provide insider perspective. He comments on what pilots should know in these scenarios, what they might be thinking, how they should respond, why they do and don’t respond that way in these case studies, etc. To me the psychology of a crash can be even more interesting than the mechanics. You get plenty here on the minds of pilots, not just the functioning of aircraft.
My main complaint is that this book needed a copy editor. It’s well written, no question. But it’s got a few really glaring grammatical errors and is fairly light on commas, making for some sentences I had to reread to understand.
This book is available free as an ebook on Hoopla, if that’s a service your local library subscribes to.
My main worry was that this book would read like a dense report. It does not. The author takes a conversational tone. Yes, he does get technical and there are diagrams. But he’s also aware of reader confusion and explains things better and more thoroughly than any plane crash documentary I can recall seeing.
In addition to blow-by-blow analysis of his chosen crashes, he also steps back to give helpful and fascinating context on the history of the technology and the airline industry. I found the amount of this kind of info to be just right: brief bios of the key figures involved, basic explanations of the tech, maybe a fun anecdote thrown in, and then moving on. This will surely give you a deeper appreciation of the inventions involved in making modern aviation happen—and happen (mostly) without incident.
As a pilot himself, Hersch is also well equipped to provide insider perspective. He comments on what pilots should know in these scenarios, what they might be thinking, how they should respond, why they do and don’t respond that way in these case studies, etc. To me the psychology of a crash can be even more interesting than the mechanics. You get plenty here on the minds of pilots, not just the functioning of aircraft.
My main complaint is that this book needed a copy editor. It’s well written, no question. But it’s got a few really glaring grammatical errors and is fairly light on commas, making for some sentences I had to reread to understand.
This book is available free as an ebook on Hoopla, if that’s a service your local library subscribes to.
Read
November 11, 2020If you are in search of riveting, edge-of-your-seat, real-life stories about people in grave distress looking for a way out, consider the work of Jack Hersch.
When an airplane malfunctions, the stakes are on a completely different scale. Will backup technology kick in? Will the coolness and capability of the flight team have what it takes to steer them out of harm’s way?
Read about one man’s obsession with the complicated relationship between man and those ever-so-advanced flying machines.
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2020/11/11/jack-...
When an airplane malfunctions, the stakes are on a completely different scale. Will backup technology kick in? Will the coolness and capability of the flight team have what it takes to steer them out of harm’s way?
Read about one man’s obsession with the complicated relationship between man and those ever-so-advanced flying machines.
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2020/11/11/jack-...
December 29, 2025
This book is genuinely captivating and hard to put down. I'm on the hunt for more like it!
November 12, 2025
1.0 out of 5 stars Frequent Misallocation of Blame
All of the following is in my opinion. This book frequently misallocates blame. Descriptions of several airliner "accidents" are, in most instances, its attempt to incorrectly “prove” that automation is responsible for outcomes that might otherwise have been avoided. My 12,000 hours as a pilot, instructor and examiner in jet airliners ranging from basic to fully automated instead identify astonishing failures within some of those descriptions to correctly apply very basic flying principles and/or extremely simple piloting skills. There can be no doubt that automation can unintentionally hide such shortcomings until an emergency exposes them, but that does not justify most (if not all) of the blame being heaped upon it. Annual simulator checks, most of which are delegated to an airline’s own trainers, can be another source of low standards. Automation can also discourage adequate practice with some or all of it switched to standby (in suitably safe situations), in readiness for the day when (not if) it fails for real. Some airlines even forbid such practice, according to (unconfirmed) reports. Rusty flying skills in combination with automation failures are a recipe for disaster, most especially when other system failures also arise. Automation will inevitably bite pilots who don’t fully understand how it works, yet, in my experience, too many don’t completely understand and some apparently never will. Automation isn’t to blame for such failings. Some of the examples in this book clearly reveal, but fail to identify, some pilots who should, perhaps, have sought (or been obliged to seek) alternative careers. In one instance, a basic aspect of cockpit ergonomics was the main culprit, yet those cockpit layouts still endure. Automation had nothing to do with it.
All of the following is in my opinion. This book frequently misallocates blame. Descriptions of several airliner "accidents" are, in most instances, its attempt to incorrectly “prove” that automation is responsible for outcomes that might otherwise have been avoided. My 12,000 hours as a pilot, instructor and examiner in jet airliners ranging from basic to fully automated instead identify astonishing failures within some of those descriptions to correctly apply very basic flying principles and/or extremely simple piloting skills. There can be no doubt that automation can unintentionally hide such shortcomings until an emergency exposes them, but that does not justify most (if not all) of the blame being heaped upon it. Annual simulator checks, most of which are delegated to an airline’s own trainers, can be another source of low standards. Automation can also discourage adequate practice with some or all of it switched to standby (in suitably safe situations), in readiness for the day when (not if) it fails for real. Some airlines even forbid such practice, according to (unconfirmed) reports. Rusty flying skills in combination with automation failures are a recipe for disaster, most especially when other system failures also arise. Automation will inevitably bite pilots who don’t fully understand how it works, yet, in my experience, too many don’t completely understand and some apparently never will. Automation isn’t to blame for such failings. Some of the examples in this book clearly reveal, but fail to identify, some pilots who should, perhaps, have sought (or been obliged to seek) alternative careers. In one instance, a basic aspect of cockpit ergonomics was the main culprit, yet those cockpit layouts still endure. Automation had nothing to do with it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews