I have followed this thread with interest and thought to add some observations based on recent experience. Over the last few weeks I have been having a lot of fun in an uncertified simulator.
No its not MFS, its way more sophisticated than that. Its a fully modelled 738 sim with most of the bells and whistles that are available on such an aircraft including all of the automatics.
Because I am having to come up to speed on something that I have never experienced before I am doing a lot of hand flying, especially the approaches, both visual and instrument, including such gems as Kai Tak 13, which is still in the data base FUN!
I have found that I use a lot of skills learnt during the days in GA, such things as comparison of height to distance to run, especially as the vision system isn't crash hot and you don't get a good visual appreciation of the runway until fairly close.
My experience in GA has given me the grounding to be able do a lot more hand flying on raw data (although I love the autothrottle
), whereas I suspect that those who have trained under the fast track system to an airline seat just don't have the experience to be able to do this.
My view is that it is the training system that will decide whether pilots have complete reliance on automatics or can raw data hand fly in the future. My opinion is that complete reliance on automatics is dangerous. The sim I have been using still has a couple of quirks in it and one of them is an autopilot failure at embarrassing times.
Something that could always happen for real.
