Originally Posted by
Uplinker
No no; look, I am not 'happy' to 'bash' anyone I am trying to understand what is going on in aviation. Have you ever been startled, i.e. frightened into inaction, for something as simple and routine as a go-around? Here was a pilot so frozen that he gripped the yoke and held the PTT switch open for 20s and could be heard breathing heavily. And vilas tells us of another crew faced with a Windshear memory drill who did nothing for 2 minutes. And another pilot held full back-stick at FL 390 for an extended period and fatally stalled the aircraft.
I think pilots can be surprised but surely they should be able to swing into action; not be startled, frozen and scared - aren't we all selected and tested for our ability to be calm and know what to do in an emergency?
Maybe not any more. Are you really comfortable that some airliners are being piloted by apparently undertrained or poorly selected pilots, who cannot handle even a go-around : something every pilot should be expecting in the back of their mind all the way down the approach?
Better selection and training?
If you're criticising pilot's selection, then you should know that the captain of this flight had at least 20 years of airline experience, and the copilot we can't know for sure but several years at least (a grand minimum of 4, most likely between 6 and 14), so the problem would date back to many years ago.
Were you already criticising pilots selection 20 years ago ?
I'm seeing you joined the forum more than 20 years ago, so you could just read your own old posts to figure that out ! (I won't do it though, these posts belong to you)
So in essence, better training required.
I fully agree with the hands flying part (which should still be discussed on another topic), but you can't train that in training "per-se". You're not going to pay the big bucks for a full crew and a sim with no passengers.
You learn to fly with a sim, but then you practise on the line.
An intermediate solution that I would like to see for myself would be if airlines developped an easy to install at-home sim, based on a VR headset or at-home screen, company provided joysticks and thrust levers, and you could just practise your basic hand flying with it. It wouldn't be quite the same but the cost would be minimal and I'm sure it would be of some help. The visual circuit is the same whether it's a sim or an airplane.