Originally Posted by
iggy
I reckon that I haven't read the whole thread, just the OP, but here is my question: since when following the FD bars is considered manual flying? 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.
Manual flying is not about workload, or just exercising the wrist muscles (yup, we use those for something entirely different), is about not needing a third party to know what is the proper pitch attitude, the right thrust setting, and the variations of both when banking the plane to maintain the desired trajectory. Any other thing is just an aiming exercise that will actually absorb the focus of the pilot.
Or maybe I am missing something here...
Yes you are missing something.
My problem is that what some people believe will relieve me some workload, will in facts increase it.
The first occurence of this was single pilot IR training.
In a holding pattern, I used to (want to) keep my heading bug in a certain direction, even when flying away from it, and use an angular difference (180°, 90° to one side or the other...) to follow my real heading.
Instructors told me I had to move my heading bug before each turn.. Which added workload with no reason that I could see, in a single pilot environment..
Now, in a multi pilot environment, I still don't need a heading bug to know where to go, but it's pretty obvious that the heading bug or nav mode should agree with the actual flight path, because there is another pilot who needs to easily understand what is happening. So for instance if I'm making a visual approach, I will choose headings myself, and the heading bug needs to be in accordance for the other pilot.
But now there is a rule, for which the only reason given in this topic was "to avoid destabilizing the flight path" which prevents me from touching the FCU (but I still can manipulate my QNH button and set it myself even in manual flying..), so I have to ask. And in some situations, when the PM is not immediately available to hear the instruction, it clearly takes more resource than turning the knob myself, which I did very well on my own in single pilot operations.
To sum it up, I'm not talking about the increase in workload strictly due to manual flying, I'm talking about the increase workload due to rules that are added on top.
A very minor problem indeed, but I like to go in dept in the working environment.
Originally Posted by
PilotLZ
not even one of them took over control and performed the recovery memory items?
I fully agree with you on the contents, but this
phrasing catched my attention.
Since when did recovering from a stall become a "memory item" ? I thought it was "basic airmanship", taught from hour 8 of PPL training.