Not following this. So ATC tells you to fly heading 350. Your company wants the PM to wait until the PF orders the heading change? Why wouldn’t the PM just dial it in immediately?
See, that's exactly my point. "Why wouldn’t the PM (or PF?) just dial it in immediately?"
Maybe I did not make myself very clear..
Yes, the standard procedure, would be :
ATC : "XYZ fly heading 350"
PM : "fly heading 350 XYZ"
PF, if flying manual : "please set heading 350"
PM : sets heading 350, can tell something or not (this step would be done by the PF if AP was on)
PF : "350 blue"
PM : "checked"
So now imagine ATC saying "fly heading 350" + a bunch of other things. Since there is also a rule saying you can't fly outside of a target (yes there is, there are all sorts of rules like this at my airlines, and I think many airlines because our FCOM is close to the standard airbus one), you have to wait the end of the message + readback before you can do anything.
Other rules that I find surprising are :
- If you land with ATHR on you have to retard it fully from climb to idle
I was told that this causes problems to some pilots because of the difference between autothrust and to autothrust. Retarding with ATHR on (climb gate) takes more time, so there can be a tendancy to retard half a second late (because initially, when you reduce from climb to 50% nothing happens). One very easy solution to this problem would be to retard in two times, reduce from climb to the correct thrust at around 50ft, then idle, but that's strictly forbidden because :
- You can't disengage autothrust below 1000ft.
So if you wanted to reduce workload while decelerating between 1000ft and 500ft (VMC stabilization criteria) and then disengage autothrust, you can't.
- Nothing to do with manual flying, but when asked for ECAM actions, the PM must specifically
not start the ECAM actions, he has to think about OEBs or company instructions, and perforrm them if there are some. A very simple solution would be to replace 'ecam actions' by 'failure actions' or any other callout that would not induce specifically into something that's possibly an error.
I think this last one is the perfect example of weird things imposed by the manuals.
Not sure where this idea is coming from. As another poster alluded to earlier, on an ILS for example, I’ll just set the heading bug to the runway heading, so more often than not, it isn’t centred.
Theoretically, all solutions could be possible.
Heading bug or track bug, and align the bird on the RWY track bug or the heading bug on a wind-corrected runway heading, or even visually offsetting the heading with regard to the runway heading (most common solution)
But my point is that the PF cannot even do something as simple as adjusting one or two degrees on his heading bug, if he wants to correct for wind drift or IRS drift.