16Blades
Amazing comments - you must walk on water!
Being ex-military I only ever flew one aircraft that had a partial autopilot and that was a Wessex Mk 1, doing night decelerating transitions to the hover over the sea, the rest were hand flown. When I left the military having spent my last 8 years flying a F***ing Harrier mate and transitioned to a B757 I was very glad of the Autopilot at times. I was behind the aircraft initially at 250 kts even though I had been used to flashing around the sky in my 500+ bona jet.
I am now flying Airbus A330 and A340 in the far east and most of the flying is NOT manual, for many various reasons, pax comfort, fuel economy, weather avoidance, ATC etc etc and not forgetting the poor PNF whose workload trebles if I am having FUN!!
I am surprised that you have not advocated assymetric training to be done on the "real" aircraft again and with pax on board to show them how good we "hand flying GODS"are. Let the RAF loose another in the circuit shall we? Or why not have the charter boys fly the whole 12 hour sector manually.
Unfortunately this topic seems to have developed into who has got the bigger w***ie (apologies to our female pilots) or b**ls. The "real" world has moved on!
