franzl,
Your statement here is a simplistic one as well. This generation might have not that expieience with automation, but the expierience with flying was definitly more intense one. Itīs not the fault of the pilots, itīs the fault of the management that the piloting skills rely only on automation and the handflying skills are deteriorating.
Sorry franzl, while I can agree with many of your points I reject the
"This [i.e. past] generation might have not that expieience with automation, but the expierience with flying was definitly more intense one.", theory of relative safety. They (the past generation) were experts at operating the equipment of their generation in the environment of their generation. Both the equipment and the environment have changed, and along with that there has been a necessary change in the expertise required to operate safely. Those doing the job today take it on with the same dedication as yourselves, but they do so with a skill set that is developing differently in order to meet different demands than those that presented themselves to you or to the industry 20 or 40 years ago.
We say that hand flying skill is decreasing with increased use of automation and there's a point in that, but the truth is that the overall safety gain from "expert" hand flying skill versus "adequate" hand flying skill becomes more marginal as the aircraft evolve. On the other hand, the potential losses to the net safety of the operation by allowing an overemphasis on correcting the perceived wrongs of diminshing hand flying skill to result in wholesale changes in our normal methods of operation could be significant.
What needs adaption is how we train the manual skills and prepare the pilot for the appropriate instances for their use, as opposed to how we fly the aircraft day-to-day, or as some would suggest applying an overall reduction in the use of automation in design in favour of a more manual flying oriented machine. I agree completely with you on the need to train proficiency in handling the aircraft in all situations, but this neither advocates an over reliance on automation to the exclusion of manual flying or the reverse. What is required is further development of training on the appropriate judgement of when to use either along with the skills to do so in those instances. And, we need to recognize that the evolutions in aircraft design will change what we decide is the acceptable skill level for some tasks.
In terms of who to "blame" for diminished hand flying skill I think it's too simple to just say "management" is to blame when there's still serious disagreement in the industry on what the nature of the problem really is or what the best process for creating a net increase in safety in the use of hand flying should be. For example, if improved hand flying training resulted in a net 1% improvement in safety, but a similar investment in another area could produce a 10% improvement, which would you opt for if your resources were limited as is the case for most commercial entities? If increasing the amount of hand flying on the line resulted in a 5% increase in net pilot errors due to decreased attention to other operational tasks is that a worthwhile trade for an improvement in a hand flying skill when the degree of improvement has a very low percentage probablility of being decisive in a critical event?
The reason being not better pilots today, but better equipment, more failsafe, better tested, lot of lessons learned out of the accidents our generation had to suffer. The weather was 40 years ago as good or as bad as today, but the approach aids inside and outside of the cockpit made an immense progress as did flightcontrolsystems, ATC and procedures. Take the human out of the equation and weigh the improvement. If the generation you named would have been trained like some of the new generation, the accident rates would have been a lot higher. But again, itīs a management problem.
Sorry again franzl, I disagree with you here as well. While pilots today may not get the same degree of "stick & rudder" exposure as in the past, there have been improvements over the previous generation in a number of areas due to advances we've made both in training processes and our understanding of human dynamics, as well as those hard lessons learned from each accident that occurs. You suggest that had the past generation trained like the current generation that accident rates would be a lot higher, but come on, what do you think of the likliehood that a repeat of Staines could happen to BA today, or Tenerife to KLM? Not impossible, but pretty unlikely to happen again now as opposed to then because we've learned from and adapted to our failings and improved our training in those areas and in doing so improved the pilot. It's an ongoing process, and not without its flaws, so not everything is always an immediate step forward. This is what we need to have in mind in assessing the nature of the problem and what resources and changes need to be put to it.
A fair statement would be that training in hand flying skills has to adapt to the changing nature of the aircraft and environment. An unfair statement would be the suggestion that pilots (or aircraft) of a past generation were inherently safer because hand flying was more frequent and pilots had a resulting higher base level in that skill. While they may have been more proficient at that it does not follow that they were thus overall more safe operators within their environment than the pilot of today is within his.
Cheers,
ELAC