Airplanes are living things. The best pilots do not sit in cockpits so much as strap them on. The United States Navy manages to instill a sense of this in its fledgling fighter pilots by ramming them through rigorous classroom instruction and then requiring them to fly at bank angles without limits, including upside down.
The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to “air pockets” in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their career
Originally Posted by
dr dre
Nonsense and lazy stereotyping to the max.
AA 1420 and AA 965 pilots were in the former group.
BA 38 and U6 178 pilots were in the latter group.
The second two showed airmanship, the first two did not.
I know that some cannot comprehend this fact (like the author of the article) but it’s the truth.
DRE
Add in this one for pure airmanship. Not many people know about this one which is in my view on of the most significant recoveries I have seen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...ys_Flight_2069
Summary
One dark night over Africa en route CPT, a guy broke into the cockpit. The copilot was being strangled by the intruder, the 747 fell 18,000 ft (2 miles) in a minute or so with bank angle in excess of 90 degrees in the dark. Airspeed around 100 its - same as AF 447.
Co pilot eventually struggled free (Captain attacked the attacker) but by now they were falling so fast that impact was less than a minute away.
But, once he broke free from the attacker, he recovered the plane wings level and pulled out of the dive without over stressing the wings.
Landed Nairobi and plane found perfectly airworthy after a day or so.
He never flew for the US Navy. Nor did Eric Moody. This nonsense that we hear occasionally that airline pilots are not the 'real thing' is a nonsense. Airline pilots are trained to do a very different job which military pilots are often unsuited to perform. Many of them fail conversion course on to civil airlines.
R Guy