Originally Posted by
Fursty Ferret
Completely agree, but a few thoughts...
The poster above who suggested the Captain disconnect the autopilot and fly anyway when his FO was uncomfortable with it. Might be legal commander but two crew operation and very poor CRM IMHO.
Well, it depends. The captain should use his judgment (in his mentor role) to figure out if the FO's discomfort is due to legitimate overload due the to the situation, in which case he should help reduce the load with the autopilot; or if it's due to his norm window being too small and he's trained to be uncomfortable, in which case the only cure is exposure.
Particularly in the Airbus, hamfisted flying is uncomfortable for the passengers and unpleasant to watch from the other seat as the stick wobbles from stop to stop and the aircraft lurches it’s way down the ILS.
Yes, and there are those, whose supposed solution to this problem (in full earnest) is that those pilots should continue to only use the autopilot. What a stunning failure to reason out the consequences.
Originally Posted by
Vokes55
The problem I have is when people insist on hand flying a straight departure path with flight director on up to cruising level. It's achieving nothing, except increasing the workload of the pilot monitoring.
I disagree. This removes the mental exercise of the exact heading control to maintain the course and pitch control to maintain the airspeed, but it still leaves the long term exposure to the physical perception and control of very subtle forces on the yoke and barely perceptible deviations on the attitude indicator. Also it provides a long term reinforcement of the normalcy (i.e., comfort) of the airplane simply being in your control, which is worth something. It's actually worth a lot.
Originally Posted by
OutsideCAS
but to suggest that this perceived lack of skill overall amongst todays crews, is contributing to many incidents and accidents is simply untrue - yes, quotable areas where this was a contributor are definitely possible but statistics don't suggest that safety is now being compromised by the levels of automation used daily by crews.
Given that virtually every recent high profile crash has been due to hand flying incompetence, this argument will take some more detail to flesh out.
and the automation when used correctly and monitored and understood, can only be a huge benefit while working correctly.
So what does "used correctly" mean? Is autopilot down to a few hundred feet on a severe clear day into a quiet airport "used correctly?" Do you think that's a huge benefit?
Originally Posted by
excrab
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?
Why not?
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.
Yes, I agree that's an absurd inversion of the role of the sim. When someone needs to "practice" an element of supposed routine everyday flying, what does that say about their baseline competency in it? And how could that be improved?