Originally Posted by
HPSOV L
The complicating factor is this:
Few, if any of the major automation related accidents have been caused by a lack of "stick and rudder" skills. It is more nuanced than that. The major factor they have in common has been a failure to perceive an indirect mode change or understand a confusing system failure in time to prevent an accident. Being able to manually fly a decent raw data ILS, or fly an arc within half a mile is not really that relevant. In fact it is presumptuous to suggest that the incident pilots weren't as skilled at manual flight as any of us.
Some will argue that constantly practicing manual skills gives you a better ability to detect anomalies sooner. There may be some truth in this but you'd need to do it far more than is realistically practical and it introduces it's own set of risks which may outweigh the (debatable) rewards.
Well I was typing this out as Judd made his post above saying essentially the same thing but in fewer words. Anyway,
Do you have any examples of the crashes you're talking about, and how this applies? Because when too general, it's too easy for people to be talking past each other, with one meaning one thing and the other interpreting that as another, and ultimately addressing different things. And though I disagree with you, I think this is a good discussion to have and want it to be clear.
I listed in post 53 some crashes, and don't know if this is a reply to that or not.
The part where we agree, is that 2 out of those 3 started with cascading mode confusion, or the pilot's situation view being different than the autopilot's. (But this was the precipitating event that started the chain, and I don't see it as a "complicating factor" on the skills required as a response.)
The part where I hope we agree (but don't know if we do, and would like to find out) is that this situation should force a manual take over. In one of those 2, this happened.
The part where it seems we disagree, is that what follows after this manual takeover should be included as the baseline "stick and rudder," or manual handling skills, or whatever you want to call it. Basic flying of the plane, as you would a Cessna 172.
You dismissively list a few maneuvers as kind of a sideshow curiosity that one can brag about but "are not really that relevant." But what would have saved those airplanes is more than being able to fly some maneuvers after mentally preparing oneself and mustering up all of one's concentration after picking an easy time, shedding all nonessential tasks, etc. Yeah you can demonstrate the "skill" that way and check the box, but it's not enough. What's required is far more than that, it's a casual ease of something done (not "practiced," but simply done as a matter of course) every day like parking your car or doing a take off on a clear and calm day. And while doing so, have spare mental capacity to handle the other elements of a normal or emergency flight. It's only with that baseline that once the cascading mode confusion starts and it becomes apparent that that the airplane is headed toward crashing, the path toward not-crashing (click-click, level the wings, N1 to 60% and VSI to -800, or whatever rough intial actions apply to the particular scenario) can be embarked on
without deadly reluctance.
I don't know if you were ever an instructor, but if you were, and the student ever took the situation far outside the error you allowed for him and headed toward a crash, would you say "my plane" (the equivalent of click-click) or start talking to him faster in hopes of him fixing it himself? The pilots in these crashes very much knew they were headed for trouble, but had a reluctance to say "my plane" and fly it to safety, that could have only come from a lack of the necessary skill, in the useful/meaningful sense. (If they had the skill, why didn't they use it? Having it but being too afraid to use it when suddenly called upon, is the same as not having it.)
Plus, if we're only to be ready to fly the plane in the "let's crack-our knuckles and take a deep breath, all right let's give it a go, but only because it's VFR and we're at a quiet outstation" sense, that puts lie to the whole fig leaf of our role in the cockpit being there "to take over if the automation fails." When it fails it's gonna be the "I'm suddenly thrust from a sleeplike slumber into this cockpit with a yoke/stick in one hand, a pair of rudder pedals, a pair of throttles in the other hand, and a multitude of information sources in front of my eyes to quickly make sense of" way. And the only part of your brain that's gonna be able to meaningfully handle all of that, is the part that treats it as instinct, because it's been baked in as such via everyday routine.