Originally Posted by
EDLB
The usual hero pilot which saves the day.
There is a saying in the flying community, that it is better to have a savvy pilot who decides in poor weather conditions not to take off, than using his superior skills to fly and land in that poor conditions.
I think the same goes for the plane.
Better a plane that not tries to kill you, than one that needs superior pilot skills to stay alive.
Ah! A good saying. It is true. "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots"
But in your scenario, what happens if the weather conditions are forecast to be good and end up being much worse! As often happens. If you as a passenger were to be grounded every time weather was poor (on limits ) at destination to avoid over taxing the piloting skills of the skipper you would not be flying too often. But it would be very safe.
All winter we have pilots landing in very challenging conditions with high winds, cross winds, wet runways, low cloud base and poor visibility MANUALLY. That is because no autopilot yet devised can takeoff or land in such conditions. Max wind for auto land is circa 30 kts and 25xwind - approx. At our local CITY airport the wind is often up to 60-70 with associated poor conditions and yes there are a few go arounds, but generally the airport keeps to schedule. That takes a lot of raw skill.
And flying is very safe already. Let us get this in proportion. 2017 nobody died on a commercial flight on an airline. 3. 5 billion passengers. So this year we have had two Max planes tragically crashing. It will be very sad if they could have been avoided by learning from previous events that happened earlier but were not reported - or even the flight the previous day where it seems the same thing happened but valuable knowledge perhaps withered on the vine. We do not know yet because the investigations are not complete. But, the lessons will be learned, and they will be variety and a mix of system design, human factors and other relevant issues.
As for "heroes". I do not rate the thousands of pilots I have flown alongside over nearly 40 years as "heroes "even though they were extremely competent. Just doing the job they were trained to do. Which is what Sully said. He didn't see himself and a hero - others did that.
Cheers for now and thanks for the diverse opinions which make this forum so lively.
Y