Originally Posted by
NoelEvans
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.
You don't even have to go back 25 years. I started 8-9 years ago on a 19-seat turboprop with an operator that had a fleet of about 12 of them. Only two had autopilots, only one AP was any good. Regular CAT I ILS approaches with weather at minima and flying in conditions from +35C to -40C. And these jobs are still around.
But the job market did not encourage taking such a career path, as the plane was <10.000kg MTOW and less than 20 seats. I had roughly 2000hrs on the thing and couldn't get an interview to save my life no matter how many letters I sent out. Eventually was in the right place at the right time to roll into a jet job. I will still quite happily fly manual and even raw data with weather at CAT I minima. Properly briefed and if you are not on minimum fuel, it is a non-event.
Like the thread starter, I'm also still a bit confused by policies where the PM has to set speed/heading/altitude targets when PF is in manual flight. In my experience and opinion, it is more efficient for the PF to set and call them out and for the PM to monitor and call out any mistakes or issues. But on the other hand, it hasn't caused any huge issues yet, so I just roll with it. And if it seems that the PM is a bit swamped, which can still happen, especially with new guys... I'll just apply some common sense and set the damn things myself
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