Originally Posted by
safetypee
Noel, re 'children of the magenta … '
The most important item which the training presentation does not tell you, is when to turn the automatics off (and how you know - and why).
Pilots must understand which are the most important flight parameters and the action 'trigger' values, and have sufficient mental capacity (low workload) to make those judgements.
This is not learnt by watching videos.
I
fully agree. But watching those videos shows you what sort of things you need to 'get out there' and learn.
RetiredBA/BY, for the second time on this Thread I agree with everything that you have said. There is one big difference between you and these new 'zero to hero wizz-kids': you were trained properly.
But you don't have to go as far back as to Canberra days to get back to that total hand-flying for real. The airline that I was in only 25 year ago (and not a small 'here-today-gone-tomorrow' airline, it was the third biggest scheduled carrier in the UK -- there's a clue to the name!) had an entire fleet that had no autopilots. The pilots on that fleet would daily 'do battle with the elements', with whatever the east coast haar or fret would throw at them, safely and successfully using only their skills and ability. I doubt that many of the modern 'button pushers' would have coped on a fleet like that.
An interesting comment about hand-flying: Vanderburgh, in that excellent lecture of his, considers hand-flying to be without autopilot and without auto-throttle where you are controlling the flight path and the energy of the aeroplane; with the auto-throttle still engaged he considered it to be just 'guiding the aeroplane'. I agree. Recently I 'hand flew' an approach from quite far out but with the auto-throttle still engaged. It was easy and I actually passed the comment to my colleague in t'other seat that by I was "cheating"!!
(Off the Thread for a mo and onto the Canberra topic: Did anyone notice what the high-altitude monitoring aeroplane was for the Spacex Dragon's return to earth? The Administrator of NASA said that he was the first Administrator not to have been alive when Americans were on the moon... Well,he wasn't alive when
that aeroplane was built!!!)