Flight Detent, Engineer and Gang: Can a civil/mechanical engineer, who loses electrical power on his computer, or when something crashed, do his calculations using other "raw data" such as a slide rule, if a formula is provided?
There is an article in a very recent "Flight International" about a British Airways A-319 which lost all flight displays, at night from what I recall.
If pilots, whether quite inexperienced or with many years of flying don't at least try some hand flying (not just when climbing to 15,000'), possibly manually tuning in VOR frequencies
![EEK!](images/smilies/eek.gif)
while enroute, using 'heading select' to steer the ship, even try the 'VOR HSI' mode
![Uh oh](images/smilies/worry.gif)
when joining an ILS approach in IMC (no visible horizon), then how will he/she be able to fly when it is a total surprise? What if your are dispatched in an Airbus (probably not possible in MEL) or Boeing with no autothrottles? Would you refuse the aircraft?