Hi
Microburst,
Sorry, I am in part responsible for the divergence of your thread.
Companies are loathe to lay down SOPs lest they later get caned by a law suite. If the aircraft has no automation the company is in the clear, if it is 100% automation the company is in the clear but in between, as most modern aircraft are, should they lay down an SOP and an accident occur then they could find themselves liable. The LHR example I quoted earlier was SOP because experience had shown that the manually flown departures, using the flight director, simply wasn't as accurate as that flown by the auto pilot. Likewise, stipulating that an auto land should be carried out under certain reduced visibility and cloud base criteria was derived from knowing that the automatics simply did a better job and reduced the chance of a GA or diversion, in the landing case passenger satisfaction and confidence may also enter the equation.
The most that you are likely to find in any operators ops. manual is something along the lines of, " Under the following circumstances auotoflight is mandatory", (that would be CatII/III landing and certain airfields for T/O, after a given height, like 400'). Outside of that they are not likely to commit themselves more than to say that whilst the full use of autoflight is recommended pilots are expected to maintain their hand flying skills when conditions permit. Possibly an extra paragraph about turbulence and auto flight. That was as much as we got in the SOPs of my last employer.
I think that major problems could arise when inexperienced pilots are flying highly automated aircraft in unsophisticated environments.
And no,
Rubik, I don't feel in any way chastened!
