Originally Posted by vikena
if you believe and accept limitations without question you are probably a sort of a dork
Well my young colleague Vikena, welcome to the wonderful world of flying for remuneration.
Let me uncover some aspects of it for you.
As a professional pilot, you can believe and accept limitations without question and no, it won't make you a sort of dork. Probably or improbably.
As a professional pilot, you can believe and accept limitations, while questioning them.
But not believing the limitations, not knowing or not accepting them is not an option, ever. There is exemption to that if you think that limitations are set too high - you can set your own more conservative ones but more liberal - no way.
And why is that?
Because there were hundreds of very smart and skillfull people who designed the aeroplane. They have made some very long and complex calculations and came out with some numbers and said:"We think that our airplane is capable of performing this". Then there were very smart, very brave and very skillfull people named test pilots and flight test engineers. They have taken a look at calculations and said "It looks right, let's check it out in the air." And they went out test flying. Sometimes they returned to report everything worked out OK. Sometimes they returned to report that some improvements are needed. And occasionaly they did not return. Anyway, after the test programme was completed, up came the smart people of the certifying authority and said: "What a wonderful airplane you have! And it performs so very well! But, you know, it will age, airframe will get weaker and not all the pilots who will ever fly it will be as god as your test pilots. So let's add some safety margins; 5 percent here, 20% there..." So many excellent people worked hard for years and results are summed in a couple of short sentences like:
MTOW 64 000 kg
Vmo 350 KIAS
CAT IIIB operations allowed with CAT3 DUAL displayed only.
And you think you are smarter than all those people and that their limitations do not apply to you?
Think again.
At the end of the day you can autoland CAT 3 NO DH with CAT 3 Single.
Is this thread really about semantics?
Yes, you
can autoland A320 in zero visibility, using CAT I only ILS but you are
not allowed to! Why? Because there were a hundreds of experts, who took the time, calculated the risks and said: "Nope, it's not acceptable - you have to have a lot of ground and airborne equipment operative and trained and current crew too to bring down the risks of low vis landing to acceptable level." Have you ever done actual CAT II or III landing? Gentlemen, actual CAT III makes my heart race faster than practising engine failures at take-off in a simulator. And someone uninformed, sitting at jumpseat could easily say "Now this was very easy for you. You did nothing except shouting "ONE THOUSAND" and "ALERT HEIGHT". Yeah, right.
Granted, busting the limitations and minima is preferable to running out of fuel above the sea of fog. But rest assured that all the circumstances of the incident will be closely scrutinized and expect no mercy from your company or licensing authority if they discover that you spent your alternate fuel in the holding. But it is always better to be debriefed on your shortcomings, to the tune of your licence going through the document shredder, than to have the whole world read about them in an accident report.