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ReverseFlight writes:
Mind you, I know a scenic RW pilot who flies the cyclic with his knees (!) while twiddling panel instruments/DVD cam/background music with both (free) hands.
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If he's been doing this long and he's still alive, he must obviously have a talent.
(about 35 years ago, I knew a man named Tony Karcik who could take his turbo-charged Tri-Pacer up against the west face of the
Mogollon Rim and hover it there at max throttle into turbulence and prevailing easterly winds, while me and my parents looked down on pines close enough to spot squirrels... Tony passed away from a heart attack driving his Oldsmobile before he managed to kill anyone in an airplane.)
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I have flown the A320 simulator (Beijing) and didn't notice much difference between the LHS/RHS controls...
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What I want you - and everyone else - to think about is whether you could do that having THE ABSOLUTE SHIT smacked out of you during bone-shaking turbulence (not an official term ;->) while trying to make sense out of degraded instruments.
It's not so much whether you're comfortable with swapping left-hand and right-hand controls - under normal circumstances.
It's all about what happens when you're being beat all to hell and back.
That's where I want all y'all to be thinking.
When things go pear-shaped, and you have to rely on your instincts.
Again, not bashing ABI. Certainly, Boeing could improve control interfaces as well.
But it's time that we started thinking about the interface - for a long time now, that interface has been primarily designed by software engineers, and secondarily by pilots.
Test pilots.
Not line pilots.
Line pilots are the "joes" who save my big white butt every time I fly.
Those pilots are the ones I think should have first say - and I think they should have more input than, say, a newly hired accounting major who thinks he/she can spot ways to save money in an air transport operation.