Originally Posted by
PilotLZ
Why does anyone have to pretend that they know better than the manufacturer how to fly the aircraft? Those were the procedures it was tested and certified with, how come that they are suddenly deemed inadequate and unfit for purpose (which is exactly what the heavy "customization" of SOPs suggests)?
Sticking to Mr. Boeing/Airbus SOP has a distinct disadvantage - it means the airline's SMS has nearly zero input into it, and the input it might have, will have an enormous latency between the line events and the implementation of the SOP change that seeks to eliminate similar events from occuring.
Manufacturers cannot predict every single operational environment in the world, and these will vary a lot between airlines - e.g. requency changes over Africa, where all frequencies have a single decimal number and occur once every hour pose less risk of dialing the wrong frequency, getting into PLOC and perhaps even getting intercepted than operating in Maastricht/Rhein area in EU, where you have 8.33 frequencies, and changes less than 5 mins apart.
Similarly, pointing to MCP/FCU might seem silly to somebody who operates in airspece, where you get five level changes in the entire flight, but it might - possibly - make a small bit of sense when you operate 4 or 6 sector days into London TMA, FRA, etc., where you often get 20 level changes on the way up and 20 on the way down.