This week I did my first flight in 61 days. I am rather fortunate that quite a lot of our flights end with visuals or V/S + HDG SEL flown NDB-DME or VOR-DME approaches that require you to think. If I was only doing big cities instead of small islands in a 757 then I'd be reeeeeally worried.
Maybe a few hours per year in a light aircraft would be a good thing to introduce as part of a commercial licence revalidation?
"You might need a little more rudder, sir"
"What?"
"More rudder, sir. Look at the slip ball."
"The who?"
"Slip ball, sir, down there, showing you that we're yawing."
"Hey! We have those on the 'Bus. I think so, anyway, maybe somewhere down over on the F/O's side. Oh! You're trying to tell me that the autorudder has failed?"
"No sir, you need to put rudder in yourself."
"Manual rudder? Are you telling me that all 4 systems have failed???"
"You have 4 on the Airbus, then?"
"Naw, just 3 and an F/O. Hey, these PA28-140s run out of airspeed real quick, don't they."
"Maybe you might want to take your shoes off the instrument panel and start peddling, sir"
"I have control, sir."
