Originally Posted by
HPSOV L
Basic manual flying is easy because it's intuitive. Even more so with all the fly by wire assistance. Operating an airliner and continuously fully comprehending it's state and various modes is a whole different story. For this reason I'm not totally sold on encouraging the distraction of manual flying beyond the takeoff and landing phases. It does polish skills but in practice they only need to be at a certain basic level. In my opinion it's an emotionally appealing argument but in reality the risk vs reward doesn't stack up.
If the skills were at the basic necessary level, we wouldn't be having crash after crash that was caused by a lack of skill. And things like this wouldn't be happening:
Originally Posted by
iggy
I remember when I once asked a 4.000 hours FO "would you like to do a visual?", he said "yes, why not?" and I had to take the controls merely minutes after I switched off the FD because his pitch attitude was swinging from almost 8 degrees nose up to below the horizon. And that was with A/T ON.
Do you think this is an isolated incident, or a momentary pulling back of the curtain on a widespread condition that doesn't normally have the chance to show itself? How many flights do you have where you
don't turn the FD off like this, and this level of incompetence could be sitting there lurking unexposed?