Interesting article in the latest Flight International:
Thomson crews undergo eye tracking evaluation
Thomson Airways has carried out eye-tracking tests of it's crews in the wake of a 2007 landing incidentinvolving a 737-300 operated by it's predecessor, ThompsonFly.
In the Sept 2007 incident at Bournemouth airport in the UK, the 737-300 crew nearly lost control during the approach when the speed was allowed to decay to a dangerously low level.
The tests have discovered that a few pilots' instrument scans are seriously deficient, even when their performance would have been judged, by an examiner on the flight deck, to have been good.
The implication is that some airline crews, possibly at all airlines, are surviving because nothing goes technically wrong on their watch. The worry, says Thomson, is that this aberrant pattern may not be correctable because, even with retraining, the pilots concerned tend to revert to their natural patterns later.
I wonder if a GA jockey with a couple of thousand hours hand flying would be better than a 200hr jet-SIM MPL in this regard?
I would say YES. We all need practice to stay good at it, But would an MPL ever have it in the first place?