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Old 26th May 2019, 06:04
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john_tullamarine
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... and, yet, 30 years and more ago, on the jets of the time, folks of such persuasion would hand fly the entire leg without letting the J-B stuff get a look-in. Anything under about 90 minutes sector time would be hand flown for this chap. If the meal were a good one, perhaps the autopilot might get a few minutes for the meal break.

No-one ever seemed to complain or be too concerned about the workload. Then again, the AN/TN philosophy of the day was to overtrain the flight crews so, perhaps, that may have had an influence on the level of relaxation with workload ? I recall one captain's comment on the subject of captain's observation capabilities - "I'm not allowed to make mistakes" and that pretty well summed up the AN attitude. Everyone set out to do a high bar routine each and every flight.

When the 733 came in at AN, the then Flight Captain (or was it Fleet Captain ? - too long ago, now) - TW - took the view that pilots could emphasise hand flying or the autos during line flight - providing that they maintained competence in both and could use either appropriately and adequately on checks.
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