Originally Posted by
FullWings
Absolutely Alf.
I remember when I converted onto the 737-200 (wow!) back in the mists of time, when combative Instrument Ratings were a thing, it was almost expected that you’d have run the drills before the gear had fully locked up. Okay, a little bit in jest but not much. No time for analysis, mutual decision making, flightpath assured and all that modern rubbish!
This perpetuated the slavish following of SOPs, IMO, as that was the way to impress the instructor. Watch those hands dance over the levers! See how quick and confident I am! Luckily, being an average kind of pilot, I managed to survive without too much mental trauma but some were not so lucky.
I recall doing a 2-day sim with a captain I’d flown with before on the line - really nice chap and competent operator; not a “rules” guy at all. One of items was a “LOFT” exercise, run by the co-pilot in real time, with various scenarios for the instructor to choose from: due to lack of time, we got a confirmed bomb threat. OK, said I, there’s a familiar airfield right in front of us on a ~3deg approach, let’s go for it at Vmo and do as much of the QRH as we can on the way in. I found the capt. somewhat evasive and continually trying to slow down (not a bad thing in itself) but also determined to do all the checklists right to the bitter end, even if it meant going into the hold. I managed to persuade him that time was of the essence (tick tock tick tock) and through constant intervention managed to get the aircraft on the ground and everyone off pretty swiftly.
In the debrief afterwards, the trainer asked the capt. if he thought I was pushing a bit hard during the approach, and he replied that no, he’d have done exactly the same thing IN REAL LIFE. Unsurprisingly, the rather observant trainer caught that one immediately and asked why it should be any different to the sim? The capt. then described how as a junior F/O many years ago he’d been shouted at by a trainer and told that he would never get a command and shouldn’t be flying at all. His crime? Missing one item off an unimportant checklist. Since then he’d had a pathological fear of simulators, to the point where he had difficulty sleeping during the week before and was physically sick in the car park before each session. He could only survive by doing what was printed on the checklists: no more, no less. He then broke down in tears.
The trainer and I both looked at each other and mouthed a silent “F...”.
Nowadays we’re all nice people(?) and there are peer support groups, industrial psychologists, free mental health care, etc. Back then? Not so much and the expectation was more biased to “man up and deal with it”. Still makes my blood boil how some people were permanently scarred by completely avoidable incidents.