Re: flight engineer
"is it time for the reintroduction of a flight engineer to monitor all this feedback information that is overwhelming the pilots?"
It's a very fair question,
What seems to have happened over the years is that the pilot's routine job has been 'de-skilled' (?not quite the right word, maybe 'de-stressed'?) by cockpit automation. But in non-routine circumstances where the automation isn't useful, the automation-dependent crew may struggle, potentially leading to a serious incident. There are plenty of recorded and analysed instances where this has happened. A distressing number of them involve casualties, often fatalities (e.g. failure to reach the runway, in good visual flying conditions, when part of the airport's landing guidance system is undergoing planned and notified maintenance: Asiana Flight 214, 2013, San Francisco).
[Fwiw there is a somewhat similar syndrome in high speed railways]
The engine damage and resulting connectivity loss on QF32 didn't even involve casualties afaik. One of a number of reasons for that was that the dice on that day had rolled in such a way that it was a high level training+assessment flight and there were several extra very experienced staff in the cockpit who were able to go through checklists, attempt to read between the lines of status messages, and so on. Without that, the result might have been different.
Interesting question. I have no answer for it. Maybe the NTSB, FAA, etc need to give it some thought.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
