Originally Posted by
Bergerie1
Cap'n Biggles Sir,
Your excellent post about the need for the industry to give pilots the chance to hone their skills in everyday operations is very much to the point. When the automatics start doing something that is not as intended, we need not only better annunciation, but even more important, to have pilots who are sufficiently confident and well-practiced in their handling skills that they can immediately detect a departure from the intended flight path/configuration/speeds/altitudes/etc using the primary flight instruments, and then be able and confidently to handfly until the problem has been sorted.
From what I read, these days at a distance, current airline SOPs actively discourage the development and maintenance of these skills.
Bergerie, I wholeheartedly agree.
To me this means there should be indications (read status screens constantly on display) of what the automation is doing. Anything that automagically moves a control surface should be shown here. Especially AP functions should be shown, trim angle indication, autothrottle amount, rudder angle, you name the essentials. Furthermore, when the automatics have suddenly determined they will disconnect (as computers do, they just reach a criteria and pow!) this display should show the positions of all the essential control surfaces and engine power that the pilot will have to contend with. In other words, I object to the automatics doing things i know nothing about and then suddenly disconnecting and leaving essential things in unknown conditions for me to figure out within 10 seconds or so, or I die. I especially object to manufacturers who don't document automatic "features", when they occur, their effect, criticality and failure modes. I object to some of the automatics doing things without any indication, such as changing the thrust without moving the throttle levers or changing then not showing the trim amount. I object to reliance on one sensor for almost any of the automatics functions, but more importantly I object if the aircraft doesn't indicate when a sensor is not agreeing to its partner. There can be more. I don't want to use capitals, so manufacturers please hear me. Give me a chance to understand what is going on - why isn't it normal to provide all this indication of what your aeroplane systems are doing so that its obvious what it stopped doing when something goes wrong (as it always will).
Please give us pilots the complete picture of what's going on .. and when your automatic systems give us .. what's NOT going on!.