PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - NTSB Report: Glass cockpits have not led to expected safety improvements
Old 12th Mar 2010, 22:16
  #66 (permalink)  
p51guy
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
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Starting your career in a glass cockpit must be quite an experience.

Us old guys started with baby steps. Starting with taildraggers and eventually getting into electric airplanes that had batteries to start the engine and a radio plus lights to fly at night. Much much later we got HSI's so you didn't have to fly back course localizer approaches flying opposite the needle. Then one day we got to fly a plane with an autopilot. Wow. It held altitude and heading so you didn't have to do it. The round gauges were now a welcome help after learning to fly with a needle ball and airspeed. Then came autoland and you didn't even need to touch the controls, just monitor them.

Now all of that is bypassed so our new young pilots are taught how to manage a flight guidance system. Our new SOP's at a lot of airlines throughout the world is to encourage total automation.

I hope it works. We will eventually see. Once the Sully generation is gone.
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