Originally Posted by
aa73
Wow, I did not realize that disconnecting an A/P to do some hand flying lands you a carpet dance??
I knew the ME3 were strict but DAAAAYUM!
sorry to hear that.
From my time there, close but not quite. When I was there Flight Director and AT usage was mandatory, AP was mandatory above 10,000 (I believe now they bumped it up to 20k). You were free to hand fly up to that but dont drift too far outside of the FD or you’d be flagged, dont screw anything else up either while hand flying or that’s the first question…… Why were you hand flying, and the (perceived) screw up in itself would be evidence of your lack of judgement for what an “appropriate” opportunity to hand fly is. Add to all of that a large majority of flights on the 777 would see you landing in multiple “garden spots” of the world with useless ATC you can barely understand at 3am night after night… Or if you are lucky (like this crew) you are launching at 3am from your homebase for a long haul landing 12 hrs or more later as the sun rises, all that on 8,9,10 days off a month…. Fairly quickly you find yourself clicking the AP off just before that plane starts doing its 1st crab correction lest you get all wobbly. It was a great experience and a good group of pilots (at least in my time) unfortunately prone to rather simple mistakes due to the excessively punitive “safety culture” and vindictive management.