Automated flight technology can guide an aircraft very reliably, from navigation to landing. Yet this technology, eve...

shunhe on January 1, 2020

Hi @heidiz,

(A) is incorrect because the stimulus concerns cases in which the technology functions correctly. Thus, the fact that automated flight technology sometimes does not function correctly is irrelevant to resolving this paradox, which is about why functional automated flight technology isn't a safeguard against human error.

(B) is incorrect because the stimulus doesn't distinguish between larger and smaller aircraft (so making this distinction now doesn't help resolve the paradox), and more importantly, similar to (A), it doesn't matter what happens when the automated flight technology malfunctions.

(C) is incorrect for the same reason - it doesn't matter what happens when the automated flight technology malfunctions; we're interested in knowing why it's not a perfect safeguard against human error when it's functioning correctly.

(D) is incorrect, but at least there's a new reason this time! The situations we're concerned with, as mentioned earlier, occur when automated flight technology functions normally but human error occurs. We want to know why the human error still happens, and so knowing that some airplane crashes occur due to neither doesn't apply in our case. Hope this helps!