This might sound odd and perhaps a very open and vague question, but given that computers can be fallible
rolleyes: of course), how often do you come up against a false alarm, or, perhaps worse still, the opposite, i.e. a situation which needs attention where an alarm that should've been raised did not?
Reported problems that don't really exist are pretty common. Mostly, in the 380, they are caused by the fact that it's a new aircraft, and the engineers (who had obviously never been allowed outside), tuned the tolerances far too tightly. As operational experience is being gained, some are being adjusted to more realistic values.
On the Boeing, false alarms were quite rare, although I did once have a false fire warning in a 767, which resulted in shutting down a healthy engine. Obviously a better result than not shutting one down that was on fire though....
From hearing a couple of coughpit videos, there seems to be plenty of bells, whistles and generally noises, mostly taking the form of spoken words or bleating tones. It has been argued that an overuse of such devices (more like the bleating tones) can impact on the performance of operators in a true emergency (a bit like someone who knows a fire alarm is faulty and keeps going off when there is no fire, then that person becoming complacent when a real fire occurs). Certainly in some industries, like chemical production, control systems and alarms are designed so that they are not supposed to alarm all the time unless there is really a problem, otherwise you end up with a culture of indifference which can be fatal when a real problem occurs. Do you have a take on this? (Perhaps I'm severely overestimating the use of tones, voice and alarms in the coughpit... apologies if this is the case...)
My personal opinion is that there is FAR TOO MUCH talking in the Airbus. Sadly, they've designed it for idiots (or by idiots?), and require every annunciation change, selection, and backside scratch to be called, and then acknowledged by the other pilot. If I could be paid for the number of times the word 'checked' is said, I'd be a millionaire. And, as you've intimated, it's very easy to say the word, but not actually do it.
Sadly, aviation currently seems to be living in a pedantic stage, in which the belief is that if people get every little thing (i.e. the exact words) right then they will also do so with the big things. The reality is the whilst looking at the leaves, they totally fail to see the forest.....
Warnings from the aircraft in the videos.... There are a couple of momentary sounds associated with autopilot disconnect...because they are intentional, they last less than a second. A couple of trivia ECAMS, though most were expected. The 'triple click' sound comes up any time the autopilot/FD has done an automatic mode change, for instance if you are descending on a STAR (and the aircraft is being navigated both laterally and vertically by the FMC) and you select HDG (heading), the vertical mode will revert to Open Descent. This is a contrast to the Boeings, which will remain in their managed vertical mode irrespective of the lateral mode...unless you select the change.
