The Art of Flying

[Rat Catcher]

As there are both flight instructors and line pilots on this page and for lack of an idea where else to post it, I would like an opinion on what is obviously creeping into our industry.....not being allowed to fly your aeroplane by hand except for take off, part of the initial climb and some landings (unless it's someone elses turn in your heavy crew) and also instances where no one was flying the aircraft except perhaps Captain Gravity!

I am not targeting any particular group but the "old" way of having thousands of hours before you could "look" at a big aeroplane did have some advantages namely you had done most of those hours by hand!

Although airlines have minimums (despite the bean counters) theoretically there is nothing to stop a frozen ATPL holder being an active crew member on a large wide body aircraft with not much more than 300 hours in their logbook. Indeed I suspect that is where a large portion of pilots aspire to be.

I can understand it is not always practical to hand fly in the modern enviroment but what is being done to promote and protect these skills?

[Teddy Robinson]

largely nothing.

"candidates" are buying into a program with various operators who say they will deliver not only a license and a type rating, but a guaranteed job at the end of it, all with minimal hours, effort or experience, but plenty of financial input !

Many moons ago as an instructor, I managed to "teach" my 3 year old child to fly an aircraft and with suitable reconfiguration to land it.

New cabin crew on our wonderjet could be adequately equipped to operate and land the aircraft with a couple of hours of training because the automatics are there to complete the task in 90% of circumstances.

The model that the industry is presently following (in my experience) puts a premium on qualification rather attainment which CAN lead to the breakdown of the 2 crew environment that is designed to keep everyone safe, it undermines the spirit and practice of good CRM when it occurs .. and occur it does.

If an inexperienced cheque book airline pilot loses situational awareness one can find oneself in the single pilot operation of a 2 flight crew aircraft when one least wishes to be in that position.

In short, what is happening through commercial expedience is undermining the operational principals that the "old" system sought to protect, ie. one gains experience before entering line operations not whilst flying the line.

[flyingcamel]

This is all dependent on Airline, Aircraft, Base, quality of trainer that you were taught by etc etc ad nauseum. Personally I try to fly visual approaches whenever I can, especially as I know that in Winter time there will be lashings of hot keeping the autopilot in until minimum use height when it's blowing a hoolie! Also practising NPA's every so often keeps the skills less blunt. However this is all generally on my behest. Noone tells me to do it, I just know that it makes my life more varied in the short term, and endeavours to protect my 'purchased' skills in the long term and helps alleviate some of the pain in the biennial torture session. Of course having to fly the Dash keeps you on your toes at the best of times!

Once signed off on your final line check, it's all up to you to keep it real!

[FLCH]

largely nothing.


Agreed !

Flying airplanes using your brain, hands and feet and common sense are a dying breed, today in this bean counter mentality it's all about numbers, money and acceptable hull loss rates.


But God forbid if the automatics decide to go on strike, the managers will want to know where your hand flying skills went, after training you to depend on the automation that let you down in the first place.


So it's up to you to keep whatever skills you have current, just in case you need them !!

[Dan Winterland]

No doubt about it. My company used to allow as much manual flying as you liked, with FD's off Man Thrust, raw data etc. But we were bought by a bigger neighbour and now we have to follow their very inflexible SOPs which as you probably guess, prevents us from turning the FDs off (except for visual approaches which are few and far between on our network) and only allows manual flying if the weatehr is good at a familiar airfiled. On the face of it, it's safer. But it doesn't take into account the degradation of our skills.

On the last three days of our own SOPs, I flew 8 sectors with the same pilot. We agreed that all our briefings should be "Standard" and all approaches flown manual with raw data as it was the last chance we would have. We had a great time and at the end of it, we both saw our skills improve as we got practised. And there was no degragation of the safety margins as the weather was OK and we carefully monitored each other.

And now we have been under the new system for 6 months. I'm sure my skills have degraded.

The FAA have just regulated against lower hour pilots holding ATPLs (not quite the right response IMHO) and Airbus have issued a statement saying pilot's skills are diminishing. The industry recognises the problem but the airlines don't seem to want to listen.

[JamesTigris]

With the introduction of the Multi-Crew Licence with respect to crew trained specifically for a particular airline's operations the amount of hours in the air is likely to get less rather than more.

I'm largely an uninformed outsider, but I am still out on this concept. Increaced automation does take a large chunk of human error out of the practice of flying people through the sky but it introduces a whole set of new different error traps and it would seem obvious that training and currency need to be approached differently than they were in the past.

[L'aviateur]

Is this new? How about the sponsored pilots of the likes of BA, KLM, AF who on occasions moved straight from training onto the 747 or similar? I know the sponsorships are rare today, but those people that did this type of training didn't spend 2000 hours in a C150. How much relevance does SEP flying have to do with flying a modern fly by wire airliner?

[Coffin Corner]

Our company encourages hand flying, but only if the situation allows, i.e. Not in busy airspace (CDG etc) or the workload is high.
Personally I try to do 1 raw data ILS per day so long as the wx is suitable (i.e. not gusting 40kts). Now and again we'll fly a simple SID raw data up to TOC, but flying with the AP out in the cruise is dull.

CC

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Surely, flying it when it is gusting 40kts would prove to be far better training than when it is a CAVOK calm day? You can't choose when you might have to manually fly in an emergency, so would it more make sense to have experienced poor conditions first?

[Luke SkyToddler]

You can't tell when an engine might fail either Foghorn ... that's why we have sims for practicing stuff and very restrictive SOP's for what we can and can't do in real life.

I'd certainly like to do more hand flying at the edge of the envelope in the sim, but I certainly wouldn't want people doing it on the line for the sake of "practice" with a full load of punters on board.