If anyone has doubts about the safety value of keeping in regular simulator practice at basic hand flying raw data flying skills, then suggest you read the Pprune Rumours and News continuing thread on the Eygptian Flash-Air B737-300 accident that occurred under CAVOK dark night conditions in January 2004 at Sharm-el-Sheikh killing 140 people.
The CVR transcript makes for chilling reading especially the repeated calls by the panicking captain as PF for the autopilot to be engaged as he lost the plot trying to hand fly a normal climbing turn. The aircraft went into the ocean at 406 knots with the pilot still trying to engage the autopilot. I recall a similar tragedy involving an totally incompetent crew of an A320 that hit the water at similar speeds somewhere in the Middle East a few years ago.
It is clear that regulatory authorities in UK and other parts of the world need to do more than just just show "concern" at the lip service paid by operators to maintenance of basic handling skills.
While the Flash Air crash is an extreme case (in more ways than one it seems) of total pilot reliance on automatics to the exclusion of all else, there is no doubt in my mind that a similar mind-set exists in the flight operations management of most airlines.
When the switching off of a flight director is perceived as a potential heart attack event, what hope is there for those pilots who wish to maintain raw data skills both in the air and in a simulator? Government Examiners of Airmen must step in and stop this rot of now dangerously diminishing basic flying skills caused by airline management insistence of use of one hundred percent automatics from lift off to near touch-down.
Last edited by Centaurus; 8th November 2005 at 00:17.