The advent of computerization and automation in the cockpits of commercial airliners allowed the airlines to reap a wide variety of benefits. The switch initially encountered fierce opposition from airline pilots' unions, but it had great appeal to airline operators because of the cost savings involved. The new cockpit technology also caused some unanticipated problems, however, illustrating the fact that technical advances are not always a simple forward movement.
Technology can sometimes cause new problems even as it solves old ones.
Researchers in NASA, academia and industry all recognized that the new cockpit technology and automation could cause some problems, especially with regard to the role of the pilot and pilot-machine interfaces. For the first time, human factors became an integral part of design analysis, and researchers looked closely at optimum levels of pilot workload and ways to keep pilots involved involved in the computerized systems. Delmar Fadden's flight deck technology group at Boeing, for example, was formed specifically to look at the human performance aspects of the 767's new cockpit technology. The researchers' main concern was that the automated systems would cause the pilots' workload to become too low, and the pilots would be too far out of the control loop. After the 757 and 767 had been in operation for a few years, however, pilots began complaining that far from being too low, their work load was actually too high.