France: Pilots warn on technology risk while chiding speculators

French cockpit crew representatives have highlighted the potential risks posed by increasingly advanced technology, while simultaneously urging restraint over speculation regarding the Boeing 737 Max accident in Ethiopia. French pilots’ union SNPL states that air transport has previously suffered from accidents linked to the “extremely sophisticated” logic of computer technology intended to make flight operations safer. “These systems…are developing so quickly that certification authorities are struggling to assess their side-effects,” it warns, particularly regarding crew training. The union adds that such systems, in turn, can depend on potentially “unreliable” sensors. This pace of technological evolution, it says, makes the decision to implement a precautionary grounding of the 737 Max understandable. <br/>