MAKE AVIATION GREAT AGAIN - IT'S TIME TO TURN BACK.

How wonderful it is to have an incoming president who is, by his own admission, a leading, if not the leading, world authority on most subjects.

- PETER GARRISON

THE GUIDANCE HE ONCE TWEETED regarding the excessive complexity of aeroplanes should be taken to heart by every pilot, passenger, and engine or airframe manufacturer.

As former President Trump noted, “airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!”

It is certainly true that any airliner is a fearfully complicated thing, not only so complicated that an MIT degree is required, as the former (and he says still) president said, to understand it, but also so complicated that something in it is just about certain to go wrong at any moment. Examples of things that have gone wrong in aeroplanes are so numerous that I will not even attempt to list them here.

The purpose of all this unnecessary complexity is merely to make life easier for pilots, who, unlike their great predecessors of the olden days, today just want to sit in air-conditioned cockpits talking about their investments.

If you have real human intelligence available, why bring in artificial intelligence to fly the aeroplane? Take, for example, the flight management systems that have caused Boeing so much grief. For many decades, pilots – very great, skilled pilots, I might add – flew aeroplanes by holding on to the controls and moving them as necessary to stay on course. Why was this system abandoned? Surely only to line the pockets of those who pretend to improve aviation safety by adding expensive complications.