I used to be in the hand fly hand fly hand fly camp, but nowadays I am beginning to wonder...
A few weeks ago I sat through a CRM recurrent presentation where we shown FDM readouts from two approaches that had gone horribly wrong, one a hand flown visual straight in approach by a captain with 13000 hours on type (medium Boeing jet) being monitored by an F/O with 3000 hours on type, on a severely nice weather day, the second a hand flown raw data ILS on the same type, also by an experienced crew.
Prior to the first approach, we were told what the weather conditions were, and the group was asked "who would have flown a visual approach"? Of those watching the majority, mainly youngish (under 30) F/O's and Captains said they would. My question is why?
Just as in the 1950's there were probably those who said "everyone should be able to fly a VLF Range let down, Fixed card RBI's are for poofters", I cannot help thinking that too many people are suffering a back lash against automation which is going too far. "Children of the Magenta Line" was filmed in 1998, before many of those at that CRM presentation had even had their first trial lesson, but all of them could quote "what should we do? click click, click click".
I'm sorry, but I can't help but disagree nowadays. 20 years on, if we are given a runway change it takes us at most 30 seconds to change the FMC for the new runway's ILS (I am talking B737 here, I don't know about Airbus). When that film was shot I was flying a medium swept wing jet with no EFIS and a nine way point INS in which apart from Oceanic sectors we just entered the destination lat long for a rough ETA and flew VOR to VOR (or NDB NDB in Russia). Before that I flew Turbo props with no auto pilot or flight director, Tail wheel bush flying, light piston twins for air taxi, and did my initial IR with a fixed card RBI, so I don't think I am a child of the Magenta line. But in the last twenty years of flying EFIS turbo props and twins I have never had to dispatch without at least one of the dual autopilots working, or at least one of the flight director.
The worst thing I hear now on the flight deck is an F/O who says to me "I have the sim coming up, do you mind if I practice a....", because it shows that the airline I work for and the industry as a whole has totally lost the plot...Simulators were invented to let us practice for something that might happen in the aircraft. It should never be the other way around.