> The answer cannot be 24/7 full-blown totalitarian surveillance state on everyone.
Surveillance is actually pretty common in many high-risk environments. And piloting is very much not just any other job but an exceedingly rare situation where the lives of hundreds of people are in the hands of only two people without anyone else being able to do anything to influence the outcome.
That pilot unions don't want surveillance is to be expected (the union is there to act in the pilots interest) but ultimately it isn't just up to them.
> Should we also put bodycam on all medical doctors and record all surgeries and all interactions?
Yes. We are finally starting to do so for police. These are all situations where an individual or very small team has direct control over the life of others who can't defend themselves.
> How about actual switch covers (and switches that are not located right in the same area as stuff you are using routinely) instead of a glorified detent? Though I suspect this would also succumb to muscle memory
The switches are already pretty distinct - but that only reduces failures, it can never eliminate them entirely.
> Or (at the cost of complexity) you could interlock with the throttle lever so that you can't flip the cutoff if the lever isn't at idle
More complexity also means more failure modes. You don't want it to be impossible to shut down the engines due to a broken throttle sensor.
Essentially impossible is not the same as impossible. We already know that an improbably sequence of events took place because a plane crashed which is highly unusual.
This is the difference between the official investigation and casual online comments for which it's OK to consider it pilot error once there is sufficient indication for that.
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