Automation, Protections, and Tribulations

Abstract

The long black runway sweated with haze as the elegant airliner made a swift landing. Within seconds, the wide-body aircraft reached the end of the runway and stopped. The regular stir of passengers—anxious to get out of their seats, eager to collect their belongings and disembark—was missing. In the large cabin, designed to carry more than 300 passengers, sat only three men. Two of them were seated side-by-side in the middle of the aircraft. In the forward section, behind a large console full of computer screens, panels with switches and buttons, rolls of printouts, and a mass of multi-colored wires, sat another man.

“On bare wings I brought them unto me.”

—from a plaque in an airmen’s memorial on the River Thames, London; an adaptation from Exodus 19:4.