This summer, while you're jetting off on your holiday abroad, just bear this in mind - it's almost certain that there is no physical connection between the flight crew of your aircraft and the control surfaces and power plants that are actually keeping you in the air. WHEN YOU are sitting comfortably at 30,000ft, all that's stopping you from spiralling at several hundred miles an hour into the land or water below is a technology called fly-by-wire (FBW), a suite of hardware and software control systems that has revolutionised powered flight over the past 20 years.
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