Originally Posted by
bafanguy
Tomaski,
Right on point ! However, I suspect some of the skills deterioration might be due to airline management not adhering to this philosophy from the SAFO:
"An air carrier’s line operations policy should permit and encourage manual flight operations..."
I never understood pilots who didn't want to "fly" the airplane as often as possible. And a few minutes of manual flight a couple of times a year in the sim really won't fix the problem at all.
Airline managements need to step up and see what's happening...then do something about it. Same for the line captains. Even low time pilots will develope the skills if only they are encouraged to hand fly and given the opportunity. Nobody is born with these skills.
Agree, but I'm reminder of a saying from the investment advisor world that went "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM." Now of course this was back when IBM was considered a safe, though boring, investment. Picking IBM for a portfolio was a "safe" choice that was difficult to criticize. Picking stock XYZ might be a better choice, but entailed some risk. Likewise, putting on the A/P is a safe choice that works 99% of the time. Unfortunately, there's that 1% of the time that it doesn't, but how many pilots think that this will happen to them? If something were to happen when the pilot was hand-flying, I guarantee that at some airlines one of the first questions would be why the person was hand-flying.