I've talked about that question with a couple of people, and we think it has to do with the flight that crashed in the Florida everglades. The crew to to preoccupied trying to figure out what caused a light to go out, so no one was flying the plane, and ended up crashing into the swamp. The problem is, we cant find anything that confirms what we think.
Plane was on AP... the only problem was that the AP turned itself out randomly and the plane entered a shallow descent... Anyway I thought they would notice sooner. They just fired the engines up seconds before hitting it...
This made me think of stuff, so I'm going to ramble. I'll explain acronyms for those that may not know them.
Some older airplanes did have a "throw over yoke" where you actually move the controls from one side to the other. They aren't very common these days... I can't imagine doing flight training with one of those.
This crash is used regularly for teaching CRM (crew resource management). It didn't turn itself off, they accidently did it themselves and didn't notice. I don't know if they ever really realized what was happening. The had a burned out landing gear bulb, so they weren't getting their "three green" to show all 3 gear were down. I've dealt with this problem a few times myself now. Three or four times it was the bulb, once it wasn't. The key (and the problem they had) is to make sure there is always someone actively flying the airplane. It can be easy to get distracted, which is what happened to them. Unfortunately, everyone wanted to "help out" and so no one was monitoring the instruments.
These days we have much more advanced TAWS (Terrain Awareness Warning System) and GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) equipment (well, back then they didn't really have any). Today they'd start receiving various alerts well before they got to a point of serious danger. The two systems work on different methods. The TAWS is the newer system and uses GPS along with a stored terrain database. It calculates the aircraft's position and movement relative to the terrain and sounds an alert based on different protocols involving clearance requirements and proximity to when the trend of movement would break the clearance requirements (TERRAIN! TERRAIN! PULL UP! PULL UP!). This system was devised after a Flying Tigers (now part of FedEx) 747 went into a mountain on a complex NDB approach in a situation where the GPWS did not give adequate warning due to sharply rising terrain. It starts out slow and gets louder and faster as it gets closer to its calculated critical decision point.
The GPWS, which is the older system, is one I believe may have been instituted because of this Florida crash. It simply works off the radar altimeter and sounds an alert if the aircraft appears to be descending too quickly (SINK RATE! SINK RATE!), is starting to sink (lose altitude) on climbout after takeoff (DON'T SINK! DON'T SINK!), or is approaching the ground without being in a specified configuration (TOO LOW... GEAR! TOO LOW... GEAR!, also works for flaps).
In the case of the crash in Florida, no one noticed until it was too late. The two modes of terrain avoidance systems were developed to try to ensure those types of crashes do not happen again. Both of the above examples were CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain). In one example there was no on in positive control monitoring the aircraft, in the second both crew members were monitoring instruments, but they became confused about which "step down" they were on in the approach and descended early.
Rambling on from the Florida crash. The story goes that after the crash (and which was apparently standard practice back then) some parts were salvaged from the wreck. Small stuff, like a microwave and some other units. The legend is that the aircraft that these parts were installed in were haunted, wish one aircraft in particular bearing the brunt of them. The ghosts were said to have warned crews about upcoming problems or danger.
Here's a link that I found after a quick search:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Haunted-Skies--Ghosts-of-the-Eastern-401-Disaster&id=545609I know this is only somewhat related to the thread, but I hope everyone found it interesting.