Originally Posted by
Chiefttp
As a USAF pilot,Instructor, and Commercial pilot now I can vouch what others have said here. I was trained by the military and was flying T-38’s at 80 hours total time, fingertip formation too (3ft wingtip to wingtip spacing ). So the MPL scheme, of which I’m not too familiar with, can produce a good product with minimum flight time. However, over the years instructing these new pilots, especially in the C-17 I started to notice a trend. The new automated FMC jets have a lot of capability. As someone mentioned, I could teach my grandmother to fly an A-320 or B-787. The disturbing trend I noticed is their reactions when the automation hiccuped, and the automation level was degraded to basic heading hold or flight level change, or even worse, no autopilot, these younger pilots were lost. Think of what happens to these folks when they lose their cell phones and suddenly have to figure things out on their own. Panic ensues.
The advantage of flying a C-152 around the patch for a few hundred hours is you develop hand flying skills, and BASIC instrument skills. I saw this behavior numerous times in the C-17 when we lost our automation and Nav capabilities (called degrade mode) and the younger pilots were totally lost. One instance, We were enroute to an Air Refueling and we lost our Timing control. I explained to the new pilot to compute our ground speed, divide by 6 to figure our miles per minute, then figure out what time we need to meet the tanker and accelerate or slow down to make our timing. She never had to do this, and had no clue. Us older guys aren’t superior to the younger ones, but most of us flew dumbed down planes for years so we have a “Tool Kit” of skills that mitigate issues when we lose automation, they don’t. Our mission as experienced pilots Is to pass on and teach the younger generation some of these “tricks” we used back in the day . I just took my annual checkride and the scenario I was tasked with had no auto-throttles and VNAV inop..Not a big deal because I flew for 20 years without either one.
Marvellous...tanx for this lil written gem...cheers from Portugal, the land of the sun
