Tttoon,
We’re on the same page then. I agree with you a hundred percent that a low and fast is fixed by a pitch-up alone, and that a low and on-speed is fixed with simultaneous pitch and thrust; and I agree a thousand percent that everyone should have a reflex to adjust thrust with pitch.
But I’ll add that this reflex is lost not only due to automation overuse, but was never developed in the first place in many people, including all the students I mentioned in my last post, most of whom had only bugsmasher experience. I think two main factors go into that together.
First, there is instinct from non-aviation life, where you point the vehicle (or your human body) in the direction it is to go. It’s common sense. Then when someone starts learning to fly, there is the much more direct-acting and easy-to-understand System 1, which this previous instinct slots right into. If you’re headed a bit short of the runway, it’s extremely easier to make the mental connection from pointing your nose up a bit to the flight path correspondingly going up that same bit, than to abstract heady stuff like total energy rate and excess thrust and AOA and all these things that it takes to really understand System 2.
So the above is instinct, and the first urge of what control to react with. The other aspect is which problem is more apparent. The flight path (associated with pitch in System 1) has a big visual cue, and is much more apparent than airspeed loss, which, for small and moderate amounts, is just a number on a gauge (out of the main vision field) and some small amount of pull force on the stick, which is very easy to miss for an unfamiliar pilot (or a familiar one who’s stressed and death-gripping the stick of his low-stick-force bugsmasher... or even his high-stick-force 777). For a task-saturated pilot, the perception of the flight path falling off takes up all the mental space and doesn’t leave any to share with the perception of the airspeed falling off.
When you combine these two factors, the flight path is seen and takes up all the attention of what needs fixing; and then the common-sense System 1 fix of using pitch is the one that comes in as a reflex, forgetting the thrust. And this is how we enter the loop of all the mini Asiana 214’s from my last post. System 1 edges out System 2 from both ends of the situation: the perceived problem, and the mentally available solution.
System 1 is in no danger of being forgotten. This is why I’m such a huge proponent of System 2 thinking taught from the get-go as primacy: not to overshadow System 1, but rather to bring it (System 2) from itself being overshadowed, up to some level of parity. It is not reflexive, it is not common sense, it takes some brainwork to really understand, and anything with these qualities needs all the help it can get to be recalled and used when necessary. And it’s when it’s the most necessary, that it’s furthest from easy recall due to mental load.
Last edited by Vessbot; 1st Apr 2020 at 01:44.