Originally Posted by
A and C
, this is breeding a new type of pilot who is reluctant to hand fly the aircraft even when the workload is low.
This is not a new type, the type is already here and firmly entrenched.
Excrab related a story of a 13,000 hour captain that biffed an easy visual (seemingly in support of the idea that even the most experienced can't be trusted with the yoke and throttles... but I could be wrong about the point, he wasn't very clear about it. Ecxrab, could you please clarify?) But that doesn't necessarily mean that he was a salty old dog with iron skills forged in a past aeon when the men were men, sex was safe, and flying was dangerous. At 1000 hours a year, the captain in question could have started as recently as 2005, already a decade after the late Capt. Warren Vanderburgh recognized and publicized the problem in his Children of the Magenta video. Every one of those 13,000 hours could have been with the AP on until 1000 . (Or, as in the most extreme example I've flown with, 100.) (Well, I guess every one except the one in the FDM.)
I remember my sim examiner, as a new hire, telling me that they don't care about stick and rudder skills, it's all about "managing the airplane" (a phrase that increasingly makes me want to puke, as if the latter is to replace the former). This is not my sardonic retelling, he meant it exactly like that.
Then my line training instructor discouraged hand flying since "I'd get plenty of that later."
Once when I was sitting in the crew room, I overheard a line training instructor sitting with a newly upgraded captain about to fly in the left seat for the first time. He briefed him that they would focus on "managing the airplane" as he already has plenty of experience hand flying. But how was that prior experience determined? Why did the instructor assume that the new captain hadn't followed all his other captains' examples?
So when does the hand flying actually come? At every stage of the airline experience, it's supposed to come (or have come) at
some other stage. And whenever hand flying experience is assumed without foundation, it's only wishful thinking and a fig leaf to allow them to avoid the uncomfortable and move on to checking all the boxes without upsetting the apple cart.