Originally Posted by
Forresthump
I’m not sure this is fair tbh. I fully agree that as pilots we must maintain our flying skills. At my airline, and I assume all others, have to demonstrate manual flying skills in the sim twice a year, including max crosswind landings, and manual flying with degraded flying laws (airbus). When workload is low, manual flying is encouraged on the line eg. A visual into faro or a quiet Greek island so that if the need arises, it’s no big deal. With the greatest respect, the sky has got a hell of a lot busier in the last 20 years and dropping all the automatics out into a London airport with a 300hr guy sat next to you isn’t always appropriate…
I do genuinely wonder where this is coming from
perhaps there’s an argument that because hour building isn’t a thing in Europe anymore and you can be in the RHS with 200-300hrs the capacity of many of those individuals is low across the board and the natural reaction to this will be to ‘rely’ on automation slightly more
however I’m yet to notice any translation of this on the line and I’m consistently impressed by the flying skills of all of the captains fly with when they are required to demonstrate them in the more dynamic situations
The other we had an issue with the ATHR and had to fly the entire day with manual thrust with no issues
Many of the criticisms against a degradation in manual flying skills is more likely to be a criticism of the low hour model and in fact many are chopped at below 500 hours but does that mean the average crew with 1000s of hours between them are less capable than a similarly experienced crew 20/30 years ago? I’d struggle to believe so with all of the non-tech training we go through now and how much more we fly in terms of hours a year