[nawitus]

If bureaucracy prevents new technology of being adopted quickly, then that bureaucracy actually decreases safety, even if it's goal is to increase safety. Yes, adopting new technology increases some risks, but also decreases others. The good thing is that usually you can have both systems on at the same time. If the internet connection and GPS fails, it's not difficult to fall back to the existing technology.

[batbomb]

Arguably, this is likely only the second crash of a 777 that's not attributable to pilot error, and the first catastrophic crash in nearly 19 years.

It's almost like this blog post is suggesting that safety of large airliners is in some sort of massive disarray that could be fixed by an iPad and a few apps.

The second thing that we fail to think about is statistics. Systems like hadoop are very popular because is because failure ALWAYS scales, so we just buy lots of things and assume the embrace the risk of failure. For commercial plane, even a 0.1% failure rate would affect 25 flights out of O'Hare every day. Square had some information that 10% of customers that used an iPad 2 had one fail within a year.

So, the idea of expediting unproven technology with unknown failure rates to a system as reliable as a 777 sounds utterly preposterous to me.

[lttlrck]

"If the internet connection and GPS fails, it's not difficult to fall back to the existing technology."

Even if there was no bureaucracy everyone involved still has to go through rigorous training before we get to the point where "it's not difficult" ...

[KaiserPro]

Well no.

What happens when the GPS says one thing, and the "internet" says another?

what takes precedence?

The "Internet" isn't safe, reliable or even bullet proof.

New technology isn't a golden bullet. Often its just a re-invention of the wheel. (whatsapp for example, is just MMS without the guaranteed delivery.)

I don't want my plane being crammed full of shiny new tech, especially if its not proven. Th reason why there is bureaucracy is to make things safe.

[nawitus]

Well, you're just attacking a strawmen. "Proven" is not a binary value, there are degrees of proof when we're talking about aviation technology. One can reduce bureaucracy while still leaving a justified amount of bureaucracy.

As for preference, it's already norm that there's a multiple different input sensors, and the autopilot and the real pilot has to deduce the correct value. (Good example is air speed, see Air France Flight 447).

[Spooky23]

You're knee-jerking in response to an incident that we literally know almost nothing about.

Aviation is a field where every major incident, and many minor ones are investigated and root cause is determined. The FAA and NTSB does fault tree analysis of crashes and publishes lots of material and bulletins to prevent similar issues.