Originally Posted by
PEI_3721
Capt Bloggs, pineteam,
The subject should not be seen as hand flying or not, pilots should hand fly; instead it questions why some views believe that more manual flight will improve expertise required to manage different situations.
It depends on what you mean by “different situations.” Will handlfying improve expertise on doing a QRH procedure for a hydraulic problem with the AP remaining on… no. Will it improve performance/SA during any situation where handflying is (or should be) happening, including the non-handflying-related hydraulic QRH? Absolutely unqualified yes, through the simple virtue of being less task saturated, which is a direct result of regular practice of one of those tasks, to where it takes, say, 20% of your available attention rather than 120%.
Opportunistic flying in low workload conditions can improve confidence, self esteem, and refresh existing skills in that operation. However, this is unlikely to improve the expertise required in other flight areas or managing abnormal situations.
Not just low workload conditions, but medium workload conditions too. When some semi-routine situation happens where a bunch of tasks fall in your lap simultaneously, like you’ve got to answer a radio call, and do 2 things on the FCP, and make an FMS change, and you’re in the middle of a flow/checklist… and one guy is handflying - do you want to be riding in the back if that can derail the whole train for the crew? Quickly prioritizing and shedding is an essential mental skill, and semi-regular practice of it (and guess what, this can happen by an unpleasant coincidence even on the nice day at the quiet outstation) should be part of our repertoire.
Also, by “abnormal situations” of which you say the management is unlikely to be improved by hand flying proficiency, you seem to excluding basically every airline crash in recent history.
Although GA should be a normal operation, in reality it is abnormal due to low occurrence, not failure. Hand flying an approach and landing is unlikely to improve GA; hand flying a GA could, but also improved aircraft / systems.
Totally disagree. You’re looking for “flying an approach” to be a transferable skill to “flying a go around,” and correctly coming up dry. But you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not “flying an approach,” it’s “flying.” Being comfortable simply in the situation of being in charge of the control surfaces and thrust, and VSI and altitude and airspeed tapes and heading/course and N1 gauges, including the impending leveloff coming in 500 feet, as well as the flap-related pitch disturbances -
and feeling more like you’re in your car than like you’re in the Apollo Lunar Module with the commensurate attention to spare for SA and the rest - is what’s going to improve the hand flown go around.
Would go arounds be better if we could regularly practice them? Of course, but we have no choice but to accept that we can’t do that. But from that to conclude that proficiency in general flying of the airplane does not improve the situation, for a given maneuver, any more than no such proficiency? No.
A concern is if regulators or operators believe that the purpose of hand flying is to improve expertise, they risk complacency - they have responded to the perceived threat. Many safety 'interventions' are based on variable accident investigation and reporting, causal allocation, and misjudged recommendations.
Perhaps 'automation dependent' operators realise this and have other training methods to enhance expertise, particularly cognitive skill, situation awareness and decision making.
I don’t understand this paragraph, especially the first sentence. But I feel like there might be something key in there… would you mind explaining?
Accidents suggest otherwise, not weak manual skills
After the accidents discussed in this thread (and recurring on this forum in general), how can you come out with this conclusion? You consider it not weak manual skills to slow the airplane by 30 pounds of pull force, over 2 flap changes without a single trim input? And not weak manual skills to be watching the flight path set to intersect the ground 2300 feet short of the runway and think everything is OK? How about to allow the airplane to slowly fly a wingover into the ocean, fully aware of what is happening, without leveling the wings?