Originally Posted by
Landflap
..........The real problem here is one I fear will never be addressed and rectified..
All singing, dancing, high-tech , Fly By Wire, Fadec engines, etc etc etc were bought or leased by the Bean Counter Department...............this ensured incredible fuel savings based on optimal, computerised predictions.
We, ordinary, every day line jocks were forced to resolve everything, heads down, through the damned computer. Airmanship went out of the window as, in busy airspace, we were encouraged to look down at the FMC instead of look up out of the window...................I too, am old school. Well trained in good old techniques of piloting and airmanship. As the automatics were introduced and built up, the notion was always the same ; if you don't like what is going on, knock it all out & fly it like an ordinary aeroplane . Airbus even fooled us into thinking that we were doing that with sidesticks linked to multiple FCC's and dummy throttles (called thrust selector levers clicked into idents).
.........Overwhelmed with modern tech...............
Until we get back to old school basic pilot training (yes, teach the newbees stalling, spinning, recovery from unusual attitudes, AIRMANSHIP, etc, etc, etc, ) and encourage fall back to high standards of hand flying , we will have more incidents like the ones currently being reported.
I agree with some of your points, such as airmanship and basic flying training, (that I did), but not your downer on automatics. Some are better than others, but without automatics, we would all be flying around in the airborne equivalent of Mark l Landrovers or Austin Minis and still have flight engineers, (no disrespect to flight engineers). We would also be flying along VOR corridors. RVSM, (capacity), and ETOPS would not exist.
Try flying through the London TMA without TCAS.........are you saying you can actually see all those other aircraft by looking out of the window rather than at your ND display? Even in IMC?
Automation was not demanded by the bean counters but indirectly by the flying public, who wanted safer flights that also cost less, and thus provided employment for most of us occupants of seats 0A and 0B.
The problem of losing SA, not doing basic flying cross checks and gross error checks, and being overwhelmed by high tech is what needs to be addressed, not the high tech itself.
