Originally Posted by
BraceBrace
So do we go-around once a month as well now?
Are you mocking my suggestion ?
It is all too easy to fly by twiddling knobs on the MCP, rather than moving Side-sticks and Thrust levers. The Airbus certainly**, with its FBW and excellent auto-thrust, is such a well designed and integrated aircraft and flight system, that it is very easy and safe to do so.
And we can all tell ourselves that the rosters are too demanding, the airspace is too busy, we have been awake since 0300 etc. etc. I do this myself, but a month after the latest SIM I start feeling rusty and I don't want to suggest it to PM in case I screw it up, (which has happened......ahem).
But if we were all mandated to log three manually flown raw data ILS approaches every 6 month period, we would all be on the same page and would have to find ways to do them and it might just help prevent us getting rusty. The mandate would also help prevent the: "Do you mind if I fly this approach fully manually ?........To be honest, I'd rather you didn't".
Practising Go-Arounds with passengers on board would obviously not be practical !!, as it would use extra fuel, take extra time, make airspace busier, and confuse, upset or annoy passengers. However, if we all - myself included - did our three manually flown raw data ILS approaches, we would all be a little less rusty, a little better at instrument flying and a little more willing and comfortable to fly manually, so the Go-Around - when it was needed for real - would be generally better flown. If we get better at manual and instrument flying, go-arounds should become less likely.
Three manual raw data ILS approaches in every six month period would be an easy way for us to practise our manual flying on instruments without incurring any significant negatives. We could all do this now - and some do - but human nature being what it is, I suggest that we need the mandate from our Fleet Management Captains to push us all into actually doing it.
Originally Posted by
PEI_3721
BB, A very interesting view.
A difficulty in explaining performance is that most activities involve tacit skills; as learnt with experience, but hard to describe. You can read or be told how to ride a bike, but you still have 'to do it', learning though practice.
Quite so. If you did not allow a concert violinist to take their instrument home and only allowed them to play it at concerts; and if you then asked them to play a piece they had not played for six months, they would probably play a little hesitantly, possibly some notes too sharp or flat and certainly not to concert standard. Musicians practice at home - often daily - to keep their skills sharp.
But pilots are not allowed to take an airplane home to practise in their own time !! (I was not even allowed to use the Cardboard Bomber in my own time to practise drills etc. at one airline - thanks guys). Yet we are required to perform to high standards when the need arises. We therefore need to get the practise when and where we can, but without incurring extra costs, if possible.
**This is not an implied negative comment on Boeings - I have only flown the B737 Classic for real, so I don't know about the more modern ones, only what I read.