RobMinter: At Northwest (over 100 flying, and for many more years) there are the two VORs and at least one ADF. Everyone trains each year for a Cat 2 approaches:one to a missed and the other for the landing. The autopilot does a lousy job of smoothly tracking VOR radials, and so we rarely use it-this increases the workload, never mind flying partly solo as the non-flying pilot listens to ATIS at smaller airports and reponds to (5) wheelchair requests etc along with various other duties-they now call it multi-tasking. This existed in the 1930s.
They are reportedly the most reliable fleet (others are A-319/320, 757, DC-10, 330 and 744) on the property! They don't mistakenly display error messages, as there is no FMC
. If you want to be constantly busy, maybe very busy on the shorter legs (35 min. or less enroute time), that is the plane to fly-sometimes 5-7 legs in one long duty period. Guessing which crossing restrictions to plan on and when to descend with a 70-knot tailwind and over 100 people into LGA, ORF, PHL etc are just some variables (the leaky airfoil anti-ice system also creates much more work-the cabin might climb at over 1,000'/min., with idle power). ATC is a guessing game. The DC-9 FO is so much busier than a 747 FE (some did both jobs), yet the pay has no correlation
, none at all.
It is ironic that few of the original Northwest pilots bid to fly it. Some of them looked down their noses at it during our wonderful merger, yet few had the "marbles" (to put it diplomatically) to tackle it, or most simply wanted the higher pay on the 727 etc. The DC-9 pilots work much harder than the 757 pilots (I flew it) and probably the A-320 and any widebody pilots... the record of who has ever bid for whatever kind of flying, in a general way, speaks for itself.