This thread may be well from 2000 … but it’s never too late to add a little something, at least my personal view :
Side stick is great, side stick is really great for 99% of the flight time … but what about the remaining 1% … ?!
Here I’m talking on rotation phase and flare phase, these critical phases when you so close from the ground.
If you are the PF, fine, you know what you’re doing or at least what you’re trying to do, but if you’re the PNF, the only thing you know except following your partner on the rudder pedals, is the final result: what the airplane is actually doing.
The PNF or PM for Pilot MONITORING, as the SOP’s like to call him now, has only half the tools to monitor properly, he is more a spectator not to say a passenger than anything else because he does not know which actions his partner has on his side stick, he does not know if an action or a correction has been taken.
If you look at the Emirates 340 incident in JNB, I’m pretty sure that the FO would have realized that the CAPT action to get a rotation was minimal, having a coupled yoke in front of him, he would have known that the displacement requested by his partner was not appropriate to the situation.
Safety in a two crew airplane is based on communication, on exchange of information, the crew must work together in the aim to make one; every action by one of the crew should be known by the other one, using a side stick deprives your partner of crucial information during critical phases, the PM has no choice than to be one step behind.
The Airbus is very nice to fly … but that 1% makes you think …
Originally Posted by HugMonster
I think I would prefer to have an idea of the other pilot's inputs to the controls