Dear fellow pilots; dear all colleagues –
Sure; at first it may not be easy to fly a commercial airliner by hand with all that is coming at you.
However: tell a baby, "walking is easy!" Yet because we can all do it - after all, we practice each day - we can talk philosophy or think about other things in addition to climbing stairs.
But because of all the autopilot flying, we now have the third, fourth generation of pilots who are completely dependent on faultlessly functioning automatic systems.
We don't admit all this to ourselves, of course, and it's certainly human to counter instead with a battery of excuses why it's not good to be able to fly at all: "Oh no - it's night time now!", "Oh no; it's been a long shift!", "Oh no; this is not the procedure!". "The airline doesn't want this," "Nobody flies like this anymore," "What's the purpose?" and so on.
And then all the crap falls out once (and usually not at 1030 in the morning, when we've had our sleep, have had our breakfast, and when the weather is perfect. But then, when it doesn't suit us at all. And the fault doesn't ask " May I happen now?" It just bangs - and then we HAVE to fly if we want to survive, whether we like it or not.
But if we don't practice this every day beforehand - dear colleagues: Let's not fool ourselves - we will end up just like Birgenair, Turkish Airlines in Amsterdam, Asiana in San Francisco, Air Asia over the Pacific, Lion Air, Ethiopian Airlines - well; you know ...).
So, is this how it should be from now on; do we want to accept that?
Very best regards -
Gunther Liebe, Dresden / Dakar