Originally Posted by
Vessbot
Big or small, I'm glad you're at least acknowledging that the stability problem exists...
Because calling it ”stability” is a ”book people” explanation that doesn’t help pilots at all. To a pilot it is a side effect of bad trimming and it is easily ”catched” in the every day life without realising it.
AF447 is an excellent example: you can debate a lot about the technical background of it and FBW laws and logics and causes and effects... if the pilots had realised that at high altitude you can’t ”ask” more than 5 nose up, everybody would have been alive today. And hence that is what we focus on, and every tool that allows us to focus on those basics makes our life easier. So yes, A/T on helps a lot because it allows us to ”monitor” speed rather than ”control” it. If we sense the A/T is not doing what it is suppposed to, we will disconnect it.
Which is what I’ve been trying to say. Remarks like ”what if he wasn’t watching..." is a desk people remark who don’t know how to prioritize in a dynamic environment. A pilot flying manual is not allowed to do that. If he needs something, he has a PM. Because the outside world changes every second. Solving your ’minor’ issue you call a stability problem doesn’t make real flying ”sterile”. He still needs to monitor his instruments. Because we also HAVE to monitor CORRECT behaviour. You can’t see something is wrong if you don’t know what is right.
As a company you might want to create awareness, and include a demo in your initial training program, however the problem is resolved by good piloting practice. It falls under the same category of ”awareness” as the limited pitch authority of the elevator compared to THS on a 737. And on a 737 that danger is much bigger than the ”stability” issue with the 777 FBW (something many people claim to be also a stability problem, but it is not). The limited elevator authority in low speed TOGA situations has already caused crashes (RAM Amsterdam), and still no training program explains it. It only explains how to resolve the issue worst case (stall recovery procedure changed).