In an international safety conference held in the USA on June 18, Airbus expressed their plan to overcoming the issue of pilots relying too much on automated flight control systems.

The European plane manufacturing company is reviewing its pilot training priorities and putting more emphasis on manual flying and enhanced flight monitoring. According to William Tauzin, director of international regulatory affairs for Airbus, the new wide body jet series A350 will be the first with an approved training procedure which re-emphasizes manual flying and improved monitoring of the situations and progress of flight. “There are times when you have to take over manually…because even the most sophisticated automated systems can get planes into situations and places from which the pilots are going to have to fly out,” he said.

The largest customer of the A350 is Qatar Airways which has 80 aircrafts on order. The airline is set to put the new design into service by the end of 2014.