Originally Posted by
macdo
Its a No on that one, the manuals clearly state that if the FD's on they should be followed to avoid a conflict between what the FMGS is commanding the Athr to do and what you are flying manually, it can get embarrassing . The normal case is to switch the FD's off during manual flight if flying visually automatics off. If you have a full and comprehensive knowledge of how the AP/Athr/FD/FMGS and Side Sticks all inter relate with each other then what you are doing in the departure is OK-ish if not sanctioned. If you want some real excitement try a FD off manually flown SID. Tried it once, didn't like it! :-)
That said, I just remembered that at LGW there was a SID that we were told to manually start the turn inside the FD bars command so that we complied with the noise abatement measurements. It would always flag up a noise transgression if you left NAV to do its work!
Respectfully disagree. Is the FD there to help me, or am I there to follow the FD? At my home base, we often have that scenario come up. In busy airspace, we don’t wait for the PM to search through the pages to find the fix. The PF will start heading in the right direction. The FD will eventually catch up.