Originally Posted by
excrab
My question would be “what were the rest of his operating skills like?”. I made the comment because you appeared to have picked the one part of the check or training where it could be expected that a new pilot straigjt from flight school would be better than someone who has spent years in the right than left seat of an airliner. Like the guy you were talking about I have in excess of 25 years in the left seat of multicrew airliners ranging from turbo props to 737 variants. In that time I have had to deal with and manage flap failures, gear malfunctions, pressurisation issues, smoke emergencies, trim failures, numerous diversions, medical emergencies and one engine shut down in a jet. But I have never seen both flight directors fail and both autopilots fail at the same time, except once before the days of RVSM and PBN when we dispatched with an aircraft in that state to get it to maintenance. The raw data ILS, in my possibly wrong opinion, is the least likely scenario to be faced now days in the real world. Had you said that his/her CRM was awful, that she/he couldn’t apply a failure management model, or crashed the aeroplane on a V1 cut (which he/she has practised at least twice a year for the last 25 years) then I would agree there was something to worry about. Not being able to fly a raw data ILS possibly shows a correct attitude to SOPs, depending on which airline you fly for. If the company wants its crews to use the automatics and flight directors then if you know you have a weakness with a sim check coming up you shouldn’t have to practice in the aeroplane for the simulator, it’s supposed to be the other way around.
And as this may sound like the arrogance of age, I was in the sim last night with an F/O who I thought flew a far better single engined approach than I did and was probably a bit sharper all around than I was as far as handling the aircraft went. But I’ve also been in the sim with people who aren’t. Not everyone is as good at everything, but when you walk out of the simulator with your licence signed for the next six months you are both good enough. That’s really what matters.
Funnily enough, I've been in that situation with losing both flight directors, both autopilots, autothrust, mach indication, Wx radar, etc, not long after take off. I was probably about 2 1/2 years in, regular line flight but with an experienced training captain in the left seat, as chance would have it. We have FMAs so heavily drummed into us that when you go to read them and it's completely blank, you very quickly have to build your SA the traditional way, shock horror! I think the skipper's prioritisation was absolutely spot on on that occasion. He was best off focusing on the problems in hand and letting me hand fly it back to London (from Hamburg; it was a lovely day). That was a great example for me in real time of how to run a non normal situation, use your resources and don't get caught up in the little details. If you've got a perfectly flyable aircraft, then a newish cadet is probably well placed to do the hands on stuff, assuming they're not being overloaded by the situation. The role of the captain in that case is surely to initially decide whether between the two of you, you have the combined skills, experience and capacity to continue down a particular path. Had it been a horrible stormy day, I imagine we'd have ended up back in Hamburg. On a nice clear day with a perfectly flyable airplane, though, you've obviously got more options when one of you is well placed to do the 'thinking' bit and the other to focus on the 'doing' bit.
Prioritisation, pragmatism and good CRM go a long way, whether in the sim or on the line. Certainly, I enjoy flying with or being trained by guys and girls with that sort of make up.