Originally Posted by
Aihkio
Question to pilots:
Don't you ever play the "what if" game with flying. I don't mean: lets pull that CB and see what happens, but more like: by procedures I can use all these configurations lets try the odd one. Or: I have no idea how that mechanism works lets dig the pic.
My sense is that some do and some don't, and their inclination is strongly affected by their background and training environment. Once upon a time, pilot training typically consisted of a lot of deep dives into systems and procedures where detailed knowledge was considered essential. Somewhere along the way (starting about 15-20 years ago at my airline, likely different elsewhere), systems knowledge became less important and more emphasis was placed on following the written procedures without necessarily knowing the "why's" behind each step. In the past when working through the non-normal checklists one would ask, "Why do I do this step here?", the answer would include particulars on how that step affected a particular system. Nowadays the answer is more likely to be, "Because that is how the procedure is written!" I suspect in some training environments, that last answer is deemed sufficient and thus further investigation is discouraged.