PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - First Officer Limitations
View Single Post
Old 3rd Feb 2010, 10:04
  #27 (permalink)  
slast
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Marlow (mostly)
Posts: 372
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
9.G - you said <should find a broad recognition along with the implementation>

One interesting aspect is that I had good connections in the industry when I wrote it. The board of IFALPA endorsed it and supported me in making presentations all over the place (I had held 2 IFALPA board member positions and was a rep for 30 years).

For example I was asked by Boeing's top guy (VP in charge of all commercial aircraft airline relations and certification) to do a presentation to their senior engineers and test pilots. It was very well received to the extent that they asked me to stay and repeat it the next day for another group. General reaction was that something along these lines urgently needed to be done, apart from anything else Boeing's reputation gets damaged when there's an accident involving one of their aircraft. (I was actually at a tech meeting and having breakfast with Boeing's chief human factors engineer when the news came in of the KAL Guam accident and I remember his face turning grey).

Anyway, the only ones who did not react well were some of the test pilots who also do initial training for customer airlines (i.e. they train the airline's instructors and managers) who were of the view that
(1) we should train every pilot to be able to do everything necessary to fly the airplane
(2) we only provide procedures telling you "how to make it work"
(3) it's not our responsibility to recommend to customer airlines how to go about their business on a day to day basis.

(1) and (2) lead to the basic manufacturer's ops manual being laid out with columns labelled with a mixture of Captain OR Pilot Flying on the left and First Officer OR PNF on the right. Most airlines then just reproduce this and will often say "It is the manufacturer's RECOMMENDED procedure that normally the Captain should be the PF for the whole flight". Obviously the manufacturers aren't going to tell them that they shouldn't do that, despite their view at (3)!

Similarly elsewhere - ICAO and others who have studied the subject agree but no-one has authority to direct a general change.
slast is offline