As a captain, Ive watched 250 hour F/O's use 100% of their concentration just to hand fly a departure in IMC. I think that the AP should be on, and they should free up some of their attention to monitor other aspects of the flight.
When its day VMC I would encourage f/o's to do as much hand flying as they want and I agree with your points on the benefits of practice. I dont dispute that practice expands a persons capability. But I would suggest that night/IMC is not the best time for it.
An excellent case in point is the QF overrun at Bangkok.
Page 5 of the ATSB report states that - "The first officer reported that he decided to fly the approach 'manually' in order to get some 'hands-on' flying".
Page 44 states one of the ACTIVE FAILURES as - "The first officer did not fly the aircraft accurately during the final approach".
The weather was terrible, it was night, and the guy hadnt slept in 18+ hours. These are not the best conditions to be practicing your manual approaches, and I would argue that putting in the AP and monitoring would have been a better option.
I will concede that the long haul guys need hand flying practice because they get so little of it. But I think that you can see the point I am making here. Hand flying is unsuitable under certain circumstances.
pprune towers - I see your point that Mandatory autopilot use is incompatable with some emergency situations. In that case, change my wording to "AP SHOULD be used WHEN AVAILABLE...".
Bateman
Last edited by bateman; 29th October 2003 at 03:46.