Bergerie 1:
Hopefully some Heads of Training will take in these points. The sad fact is, too many of us old timers (yours truly included) and the younger ones weaned on automation, have forgotten how to "fly"!
I always recall a DC10 accident some years ago at (Boston?)--short(ish) runway, wet snow; auto thrust system had a known history of faults. On this occasion, it held Vref+20 all the way down the approach. This was noted and commented upon by the crew, but nothing was done to rectify the situation. A/C landed hot and aquaplaned off the end in to the river.
The accident report made note of the fact that the Captain had not flown with A/T out for the past 5 years and so was reluctant to disconnect and fly manual throttles. Similar ingrained habits seen in the Qantas 744 incident at Bangkok; idle reverse was (apparently) the current SOP, resulting in another overrun on a wet runway following an aborted G/A (Captain over riding F/O's decision?).
David Beaty had some interesting things to say about all this in his "Human Factors in Air Accidents". In stressful times we all, of course, tend to revert to the habit which is most comfortable, as tunnel vision sets in. A pity really,because the lessons have always been there. As some old sage (Samuel Johnson, if memory serves correctly) wrote-"Man has oft more need to be reminded than informed".
In the Air Force (love ém or hate ém!}, the instructors used to delight in drilling into us -"You Fight as you Train"; seems like the same lessons could well be carried across into our Airline ops. We really do owe it to the customers.