First and foremost, I
am time-expired, and my thinking is no doubt from aviation history, but I do get...concerned, when I hear of pilots not really knowing what will happen if they go outside the envelope of normal operations. Not
the envelope, but just the standard ops envelope.
A lot of these points wouldn't be raised if pilots were allowed to get a real feel for the aircraft.
I was lucky. I spent a very happy period testing and training for unusual operations. I basically wrote my own rules. During this time I was able to play with the aircraft to my heart's content, and often came to the conclusion that some of the tried and tested ways needed to be challenged. They were often rather costly in terms of use of brakes and reverse, and in later years, I have been appalled at the tire wear -- often wearing out tires in half the time I would have expected and being presented with aircraft with something like distorted little grommets on the nose-wheels to start my time away from base.
The problem was that I was now in the era of SOPs, and free thinking was banned.
Once One has 500 hours PIC on a type, I think it's reasonable to try different techniques to get a better overall feel for the aircraft, one that you may be on for many, many years. My boss on the 1-11 let me try all sorts of tricks to effect less noise and wear and tear on approach and landing. It would be unthinkable now. But who would have the better chance in extraordinary conditions?
For a turbojet airplane, holding the nose off during landing or applying aerodynamic braking is generally far less effective and of negligible value than the use of brakes and reverse thrust.
Well, for one thing, holding off is free. Unless you screw up of course.
When you have been a year or so on type, you should be able to
feel the crush on the front suspension. Trying the range of the elevators to see what effect they have seems utterly essential to me. I'd just want to know. I eventually want that aircraft to be part of my mind, not just a machine that I apply someone's rules to the operation of. You have to either get a feel for it on nice days on big quiet airports, or find out the hard way on the proverbial dark and stormy night.
The landing issue has a lot to do with a real appreciation of the amount of concrete ahead of you. Not just a figure balanced against weight, wind and speed, but a real feel for just what it means if something radical happens. Your knowledge of the aircraft is all you've got going for you at times like that.
So often, strict rules are applied on a runway that One could land, take off again and land once more on. Why not use such generous runway length for getting a feel for the airplane? Obviously not at LHR, but with any luck, the average pilot finds themselves at a quiet regional from time to time.
I've even asked the guy in the tower to monitor the space under the ventral VHF arial. He was delighted to help, and fed the information to me on a pre-planned scale. I proved to an incredulous F/O that I could turn off on the mid intersection without the use of any brakes at all. The night before, a boorish crew-member had told me what he thought about all this, then filled the aircraft with rubber smoke from a vicious attempt to make the same turn off. No, I couldn't get him to release the brakes.
I guess what I'm saying is a micro version of Davis' impassioned plea at the end of his later editions. He just wanted pilots to know their aircraft, and the only way is to try different techniques.