Vokes55
Chip meet shoulder. Seriously, all I’m saying is, if you hand fly a complicated SID, on a regular basis, how can that not make you a better pilot as far as flying skill and confidence? I’m not saying to do it, and I agree with you in busy airspace it’s safer to let the autopilot fly it, but having the ability and the confidence to hand fly such a departure is an asset that most people would want their pilots to possess. I don’t know where your tangent about military trained pilots came from, but it sounds like you have an issue with some of them…sorry you feel that way. The military trains zero time pil9ts and one year later with a whopping 200 hrs total time, some of them are flying F-35’s. The reason they can do this is very rigorous selection, training, and lots of hand flying. CRM comes into play later. The original question posed on this thread was whether a pilot with 140 hrs can fly an Airbus, and the answer is yes, but only if they continue to train regularly, and at a higher rate than a 5000 hr pilot. If I were in management I’d require a 140 hr pilot to have one 2 hour sim per month for his. First 2 years. Practice V-1 cuts, engine out procedures, etc etc…to put a 140 hr pilot in an Airbus and let them engage the autopilot won’t allow them to build experience or confidence, despite having really, really, exceptional CRM skills….