The Art of Flying
As there are both flight instructors and line pilots on this page and for lack of an idea where else to post it, I would like an opinion on what is obviously creeping into our industry.....not being allowed to fly your aeroplane by hand except for take off, part of the initial climb and some landings (unless it's someone elses turn in your heavy crew) and also instances where no one was flying the aircraft except perhaps Captain Gravity!
I am not targeting any particular group but the "old" way of having thousands of hours before you could "look" at a big aeroplane did have some advantages namely you had done most of those hours by hand!
Although airlines have minimums (despite the bean counters) theoretically there is nothing to stop a frozen ATPL holder being an active crew member on a large wide body aircraft with not much more than 300 hours in their logbook. Indeed I suspect that is where a large portion of pilots aspire to be.
I can understand it is not always practical to hand fly in the modern enviroment but what is being done to promote and protect these skills?