Originally Posted by
CayleysCoachman
I’ll leave this thought: if, when you are called upon to save the day, you can’t deliver, because you allowed yourself to be de-skilled, how on earth do you justify all the money you’ve been paid during your career?
The money is justified if during your whole career you managed to stay away from that situation.
How on earth did you get into that situation is a much more important question than the simple struggle to survive and expect the pilot to be the hero of the day. Look at the statistics of aerobatic pilots. They have near perfect flying skills in their aircraft, refined to the perfection. Yet their mortality rates are huge compared to the rest of the pilots. They accept the risk as normal, as "controllable". And that idea is to be avoided at all cost in commercial aviation with passengers on board.
Now don't get me wrong, I fly manual monthly, weekly,... raw data. The people who fly with me are challenged to the bone. To learn the aircraft and create confidence. And it's not hard: give me an attitude and a thrust setting and I will let you fly. But I've also had youngsters in the sim who simply refused to use rudder trim because they wanted to show they can fly a full engine out climb-out without, an unacceptable situation off course. What is next: fly manual trim just to show we can handle it like a hero unlike the Ethiopian guys who crashed a 737 and therefore weren't justified to get any kind of salary during their whole career?
There is a balance that needs to be searched, and that balance is not based on flying skills, but on requested safety levels. We are not paid to be hero's that save the day. We are paid to avoid danger in the first place.
PS: Sully allowed luck in flying skills to happen because he had correct time critical decision making. Procedural he was top notch in that moment. It's a fantastic example of how technology (FBW) allowed him to free up the brain to make timely decisions. Just the simple fact the aircraft was trimmed automatically, compared to ie a B737 with a speedtrim that might activate on departure (which I fly) in that same situation is a fine example of how aircraft design and technology make the difference, and not flying skills.
And to get back on topic, I still can't believe he thought he could put it in CWS and let go of the yoke at low altitude...