But don’t you just love it when they say Capt. XYZ has 19,000 hours and is very experienced. How so? I ask, when 18,800 of those has been sitting staring out of the window with the AP engaged. Its no more useful experience than sitting in First Class, sipping Champagne and logging the time.
The odd chap I know who dares to hand fly an approach will never do so with the A/T disengaged. It’s no wonder no one can fly.
Except in the early days of those 19,000 hours he may have flown some heavy piston engined planes or turbo props, or early generations of jets, when autopilots were not reliable and better basic skills were required. He probably flew well before GPS or INS was used and so was used to tracking VOR and ADF needles and flying instrument approaches manually. He has probably experienced a couple of engine failures and shutdowns in his 28 year career. Admittedly he probably had better knowledge of pitch and power settings in the earlier days than he has now but after all those hours at the controls he probably has a better feel for when something is going wrong and what feels right. He probably has a better interpretation of a weather radar image and what is safe and what is not safe because he flew before red, amber, and green weather radar presentations and not only interpreted the old green picture but tilted it down to the ground and used it to assess his drift. He does less hand flying now than he used to but can still hand fly when needed. His copilot might think his reactions are a little slow but the truth is this grizzled veteran is evaluating for just that little bit longer before he makes a decision over a diagnosis that can have deadly results if got wrong.
In those 19,000 hours he has probably had about 5 days as a professional airline pilot where he really frightened himself. These occasions might have been unforecast bad weather or technical problems or near mid air collisions or swiss cheese holes lining up on him. He will have done many more simulator checks than an inexperienced pilot and will have seen unreliable airspeed numerous times and had he been faced with the conditions that caused this terrible accident above he might just have paused when the Mach overspeed clacker sounded. He (or she) might have looked at the copilot's ASI, felt that something was wrong and then realised the situation rather than closing the thrust levers on the basis of a faulty indication. So don't knock the 19,000 hour pilot, it is true 18,000 hours of time may have been spent on autopilot but his years of experience may have given him the skills needed to cope with the unexpected, unbriefed situation that might just avoid an event becoming an accident.