VONKLUFFEN has been rightly praised for his United Airlines "Streetwise" / Airmanship posting. Sadly the conclusions (which appear to have been written by the poster) leave MUCH to be desired!
To suggest that manual flying skills ("stick and rudder") are somehow made irrelevant by this airline questionnaire is absurd. Sadly, basic flying skills have been forgotten in an environment of automation. Understanding how an aeropane handles and why the AP makes the changes to pitch , roll and power cannot be learned purely from scanning during autoflight. When properly briefed, disconnecting the AP to practice those rusty manual skills occasionally is intrinsically a good way to develop a pilot's airmanship.
Far more accidents/incidents have resulted from WRONG pilot inputs than the VONKLUFFEN post acknowledges. Here are a few more recent ones:
Colgan Q400: 50 RIP
Colgan Air Flight 3407 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Incorrect stall recovery (Captain fought stick shaker) after icing led to spin on approach.
TFly 737: (thankfully no loss)
http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/B..._UK,_2007_(LOC)
Autothrottle disconnect un-noticed speed bleed back and applying full power against full aft trim resulted in stall and 44 deg nose up attitude.
American Airlines A300-600 lost its tailfin: 265 RIP
American Airlines Flight 587 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
After wake turbulence upset, poor use of rudder by FO resulted in fin separation and subsequent loss of directional stability.
A320 Hard landing: (a/c damaged, thankfully no casualties):
Uncorrected poor technique led trainee to land A320 hard
""The aircraft demands a relatively high level of 'assured' skill from the trainee their ability to land the aircraft correctly, consistently, should not be in doubt before base training commences and certainly not in doubt during line training where passengers are carried," says the AAIB's inquiry."
It is precisely the attitude that in modern flying machines the computers can do all the work and a pilot is just there to monitor them that is causing worldwide concern over pilot training and experience. Ok so you are monitoring when things go ****up and the aeroplane hands you full manual control - what does the pilot do? We may never know what happened on the AF447 A330 last June, but we know the pilots faced conflicting airspeed indications. Attitude and power settings are in the QRH but what if there is no time to read it?
BEA Confirms Conflicting Airspeed Indications from Air France A330: AINonline
Practicing standard engine failures in the SIM to meet FAA/CAA basic standards using Airline SOPs is all well and good but does not prepare for the unexpected such as the Hudson A320 birdstrike.
More posts here on pprune:
USA looking at min 1500h ruling for Airline pilots:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/4...-airplane.html
Airbus concerned over pilot handling skills:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/3...ys-airbus.html