Practicing basic skills – a simulator exercise only?
G'day all,
This is an area that I have yet to make my mind up about: specifically whether line flights morally should be used to practice manual flying skills that in doing so can reduce the levels of safety protection for the passengers, or perhaps reduce the capacity of the PF and PNF from external factors – and associated issues with regards to training of new pilots such as myself.
I will discuss the A320 type because this is the only jet transport I know well. From people I chat to there seems to be (at least in the U.K.) pressure to use automatics as much as possible, I think this will degrade skills.
At the airline (non-UK) I fly for, there is the opposite thought train. (In all cases I describe, it is when conditions and airmanship permit). We are encouraged to fly auto-thrust off approaches, visual approaches, raw data approaches etc. My line training was about 5 times longer than most airlines, which included pitch power only approaches (i.e. autopilot/A/thr/flight directors/bird off) from 15,000’ etc, an engine pulled to idle in the aircraft for real just after rotation on base training, and flying flights a few times from some point after take off single crew to vacating the runway at the other end (CM1 monitoring all the time) to show you can handle it if the captain is incapacitated.
When I chat to people from other airlines, aspects of my training were described as ‘cowboy,’ because of the thought that this should only be tried in the simulator. I will always stand up for the training I had. As a pilot, I feel very comfortable with the aircraft – for example at a very basic level I always look through the flight directors, something which is easy to say but I fear that many FO’s on the A320 wouldn’t be able to tell you what sort of pitch attitude you should expect for a config, and what N1 etc. I think what is ‘Cowboy’ is flying A/Thr on approaches for 5.5 months and then taking it off on approach just before the sim for practice! We know this has led to a bad tail strike on the A320.
The argument that the autos keep below average crews safe is false, it just hides lack of i)Training and or ii)Ability - you need to be able to handle it when it goes wrong. If you can’t fly an autothrust off approach with everything else working, how the hell are you going to be able to land it with multiple failures.
The training at your first airline is IMHO incredibly important as a basis for a career as a jet pilot – certainly I think transitioning to, for example, a Boeing from an A320 as your first type without the appreciation of the basics of flying jets will lead to problems. The A320 training at many airlines seems to concentrate on the very high level stuff – modes, autos, managed this and that, without building it up from the very basic pitch and power all the way up to fully managed NPAs.
Practising these things outside of the simulator, when sensible and prudent, is not only safe, but required in my opinion. To ban these things is to pander to the lawyers (I guess if you crash and some autos are off the airline could be liable….)
Touch wood, the airline I work for hasn’t had a crash or incident in over 30 years, long may it continue.
Any thoughts, sorry long random ramblings I know.