Originally Posted by
733driver
Didn't mean to call you an amateur. But we are all Monday morning quarterbacks here.
Your list above is valid and relevant but when put into context of more than 100.000 commercial flights a day around the world, that's 36.5 million flights in just one year, I think we must be doing something right. The AA brand alone has more than 6000 daily departures.
None taken. I agree that on the whole flying is very safe, but I am getting increasingly alarmed that some very very basic mistakes are being made. These are not caused by complicated equipment failures - or any equipment failures - these are caused by pilots not being pilots; not looking at their instruments, not doing a proper walk around, not controlling the automatics etc.
These basic mistakes should not be happening - there are at least two pilots on these flights and the SOPs have a large amount of cross checking and confirmation between the pilots to catch all the small errors we all make. And by small errors, I do not mean failing to scan the instruments; that is fundamental. And if the automatics are not doing what you need, the pilots should catch this and take appropriate action. Jet pilot 101.
The pilots in this latest incident not only failed to monitor the automatics or watch their speed, but it seems they panicked in their recovery, instead of smoothly reacting.
Granted, we might not all be as successful as Captain Sullenberger and F/O Stiles were when faced with a double engine failure at low level - fantastic piloting - but we should at the very least be capable of flying normal manoeuvres and scanning correctly.
When I fly and even when I brief, I regularly glance at my PFD - just as you do when driving your car, you (should) regularly glance in all three mirrors as well as looking forwards so you know what traffic is around you, as well as monitoring your car speedometer. Same with aircraft instrument scans.
I seriously think that training, testing and recurrent Sims need a big shake up. Really the XAAs should conduct them so there is no favoritism or knowledge of the pilots.
edit to add answer to SpamCanDriver, No, but in aviation we are supposed to learn from everyone's previous mistakes and not repeat them. We seem to be going backwards safety-wise at the moment.
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