Crunch, Chandler, Smilin'...
Instead, I convinced him that we should continue flying the airplane. Apparently, no one knows how to do that anymore.
Apparently a few hundred thousand takeoffs and landings every week without remark or incident don't seem to count. Is the intent here just to set one's hair on fire at the mere mention of automation vs. John Wayne-ing the machine? Let's keep in mind too, that whole airplanes, not just FBW systems, are designed
by committee. This is not where the problem that needs solving or the way to turn back the current trend now developing, lies.
FWIW and to be absolutely clear Crunch, Chandler and Smilin', I don't disagree with any of you. I've already said that I had a
h_ll of a time getting my F/O's to disconnect everything and fly the airplane like they were pilots. I used to instruct hand-flying the autothrust etc, but the airline would not encourage it and eventually wrote SOPs against it except in rare circumstances. The fear in disconnecting was, and remains, as palpable as the hyperbole in some of the posts I'm reading on the topic. I can tell you from experience, that our cockpit (340) was never so silent with all eyes front and center as when the old fart disconnected everything, (including, good god, the autothrust!) raising FUD* in everyone's hearts, and hand-jobbed it on a downwind visual from 10k to "follow the 767 on short final". After the approach, landing and cancelling of the reverse, my silent F/O said, "
I've never seen that done before", and I said, "I know". Same point as yours, Smilin'...it's an airplane..nothin' magic about that.
Crunch, not only has management swallowed hard the "airplane will fly itself" mythology but in my view those organizations representing pilots' interests (both industrial and safety) have permitted this manufacturer sales and airline management nonsense to survive unchallenged, to the point where if an incident occurs while a pilot is hand-flying, the airline's operations people's response is to tighten up even further and write SOPs that prevent their crews from hand-flying unless there's no wind, no weather, no airplanes and everyone in the cockpit has voted about the heavier workload and distraction of actually flying airplane. Now
that is a head-banger.
So enamoured, so intoxicated with technology are airline managements today that one manufacturer with whom I happen to have a conversation lamented that it was not possible to talk technical, operational or even safety issues with most airline CEOs and managements because they didn't understand the issues - all they understood was marketing, shareholder concerns and keeping their company's debt load above the plimsol line. I think that's a remarkable state of affairs for this industry.
It is apparent to everyone, backed up by recent accidents, that flying ability, or, more accurately, thinking-as-an-aviator-ability is being lost to managements' priorities which is, keep training costs low, keep fuel to a minimum, keep pulling the productivity feathers until the goose is hissing loudly, forget fatigue because "pilots should show up for work rested" and the best one, "these airplanes fly themselves because that's what we paid for" thinking will assure that the present trends will continue.
THAT is where the issue lies - not in automation, but in knowing one's craft
which is aviation first. The key is then in having that knowledge actively understood and supported within the industry. And it's an old, old, tiresome story on how the attention of the regulator and an airline's executive management is achieved.
Automation and FBW is not only here to stay but it is better than the 1rst and 2nd gen's of airliners in which a crew of four, (Captain, F/O, S/O or Engineer and Navigator) sat in a dark, smoke-filled office drinking black coffee all night until the signs went on on the other side of the ocean.
Let's be realistic and leave the hyperbole for the non-fliers and non-professional airline pilots...even though two, possibly three LOC fatal accidents is, absolutely agreed, too many, airplanes are not falling out of the sky left and right due to incompetency or the dreaded autopilot/autothrust "failures". While the warnings are clearly there in the number of loss-of-control and CFIT fatal accidents and while the reaction to same is, appropriately, instantaneous by aircrews, a careful examination of the causes is in order, not a wholesale dispensing of automation in favour of John Wayne.
I have posted and stated to my airline more than once (ask me if they listen), the spectacularly low fatal accident rate is about to start climbing unless the principles of aviation start to be addressed by airline managements and pilot associations alike. Our representations as airline professionals must be made in Washington and especially Ottawa where the magic of SMS has taken everyone's attention off the store and into mere correct documentation of same.
This means supporting our respective representative organizations, in North America especially, (because the Europeans and Australians seem to get it) in what needs to be a re-capturing of this profession and a return to being aviators and not merely managers-in-the-sky. For too long we have been portrayed as expensive resources and set aside as "bus-drivers". Management has driven this but we have let it happen.
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Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt