Aircraft and size

I've been in all crew stations on B-52G,s, both pits on Phantoms, in the office of a C-130, and in Hueys and Blackhawks.   None are built for crew comfort.  Not even the bunk on the old BUFF. Nevr had a chance to stick my head in the cockpit of a civilian liner though.

Not much for FBW though, give me cables anyday.  Fixed enough bad wiring at various plugs and connectors in my day in the service.

but seriously, I have been fortunate enough to sit in the cockpit of a B-25, T-6, DC-3, and some various whirly birds...

Only old passenger aircraft I've ever gotten to sit in the cockpit of was a friends Lockheed 10 Electra. The plane was a whole lot bigger than his Beechcraft Baron but sure was a lot more crampt for space. I got to fly the Baron, it was like driving a sports car. Never got to go up in the Electra before he sold it.

Some implementations of fly-by-wire scare me.  Now, there are some that still have hard cables or rods, and the fly-by-wire works on the boost only.  but there are ones that have no direct connections- the electrons are completely in charge.  In my last job, I asked the department head of our controls group if he was comfortable letting his family fly on the new airbus, the first commercial plane with fly-by-wire.  He said he was uncomfortable with it.

But, then seeing how much effort went into the reliability of those avionics systems I began to feel better.  Triple redundant flight control systems, or in some cases three plus one, with the forth being not identical in design, provide reliability probably way beyond a human pilot.

But, the design of the human factors on some of the systems is pretty crappy.  If the pilot cannot easily decide what mode to put the system in, in a given situation, that is worse than having no autopilot at all.  That was a factor in some of those airbus crashes.

The thing that worries me is that those commercial airliner systems have megabuck avionics systems to get that reliability.  We have automobiles now with throttle by wire.  No redundancy at all. I have a car with throttle-by-wire, and I have practiced putting drive system in neutral with car moving, the suggested emergency action for a "stuck throttle."  However, the transmission controls are electronic, not direct mechanical linkage, so it definitely is not foolproof!