This was the partial cause of Air France 447.

Pilots were so used to "the plane won't make a mistake" that they were not aware/not trained properly about things that are nothing to do with the FMS like frozen pitot tubes and also that the autopilot has a number of "modes" which mean you need to go back to basics like altitude, attitude and air speed.

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AdamN 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They didn't know their air speed (because of the pitot tubes being frozen). I think the report says that there was a path to safety if they had kept focused but it wasn't as easy as just flying the plane via 'the basics'.

	▲	wat10000 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It was, and one of the pilots was doing the right thing and would have saved the plane no problem if they had been the only one flying the plane. The problem was that the other pilot insisted on doing exactly the wrong thing, didn’t say what he was doing, and the plane didn’t give nearly enough indication that it was receiving contradictory inputs from the two sets of controls.

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p-e-w 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If it’s true that other navigation systems are as safe and capable as GPS, then GPS navigation should be randomly disabled in every aircraft occasionally to ensure that pilots remain fluent in using them.

If it isn’t true, then the military is partially responsible for the crash of this aircraft.

	▲	streetfighter64 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No, pilots should ensure they're current at navigating without GPS because it can fail, just like pilots practice engine failure procedures and every other emergency / non-normal procedure. That doesn't mean it should be "randomly disabled" for the same reason that you don't test software in production or randomly turn off the engine of the plane. Obviously.