Automation in the Cockpit: How Much is Too Much?

 There are several different levels of automation in UAS (unmanned aerial system) flight. The most common way to break them down is as follows: 

Level 0: Human operated. Pilot controls everything. 

Level 1: Human directed. Pilot gives orders, UAS follows. 

Level 2: Human delegated. Pilot gives general inputs; UAS handles the smaller tasks required by those inputs. 

Level 3: Human supervised. UAS makes most of the decisions. Pilot watches to make sure nothing goes wrong. 

Level 4: Full automation. The science fiction ideal. The UAS does everything with no human supervision necessary. 

Manned aircraft go through the same levels. Modern airliners are far more automated than most people realize. Pilots in interviews often lament that they barely touch the aircraft when they fly. Modern airliners spend a lot of time at level 3, where the airplane does most of the work and the pilots make sure nothing goes wrong. 

There are definitely different considerations between crewed and UAS flights because the pilot is not in the cockpit of a UAS. There's less situational awareness and a greater need for human engagement. It's a bit ironic that unmanned systems are looked at as the future of automation when they require more hands-on engagement than their crewed counterparts. 

However, all this automation is less than ideal. Manual flying is a perishable skill, and modern pilots don't get enough practice with it. A modern pilot is far more of a software manager than he or she is the swashbuckling air captain of yesteryear. This isn't a problem most of the time, but can become a huge issue when the plane hits an emergency that automation can't handle. 

In an emergency (like the landing of flight 1549 into the Hudson River), a pilot has precious little time to make decisions and must rely on skill and experience to handle the emergency. Split-second reactions and decisions are needed. Captain Sully was able to successfully land the plane because he had decades of pre-automation experience. I wonder if young modern pilots, who spend most of their time managing computers, can do the same thing.