Quote from finncap:
Chris - I know you well and I am ashamed of your suggestion that we were inexperienced pilot/navs with rookie copilots in the right hand seat.
[Unquote]
Greetings Alan,
Perhaps we should have shared anecdotes on our previous incarnations before we retired from the A320...
I readily apologise for my simplistic remarks. Should not have presumed, as a former co-pilot of David Airlines - metaphorically speaking, of course - to understand the modus operandi in Goliath Airways cockpits.
You seem to be underplaying, however, the unpredictability of the position, direction and intensity of the sub-tropical jet over North Africa in winter: remember what happened to Libyan Arab Airlines' B727? I still contend that our specialist navs made life a lot easier for us, as well as offering a degree of pressure-pattern flying where permissible. The issue of pilots like you taking over the chart table, dividers and sextant soon became academic - with the introduction of INS - so the effort was arguably more trouble than it was worth.
In the meantime, as I said, we could have done with a bit more attention from some of your colleagues when we introduced 126.9 blind-broadcasting in the early 1970s.
Chris