Originally Posted by 7x7
There are major airlines out there, based not too far away from India, which have SOPS demanding that pilots use maximum levels of automation available at all times on the line.
Then there is a serious problem with those airlines. I don't know how many times one can repeat that automation was developed as a back-stop to allow flight crew to manage the flight more effectively - *not* as a substitute for airmanship period!
Even Bernard Ziegler in full flow never said "See? the aircraft is flying herself. Now you don't even have to monitor the instruments or maintain the situational awareness!".
Huck - 727 crews had serious problems with airspeed in the early days of the type. In that situation, had the monitoring come unglued as it appeared to here, the 727 would have ended up a smoking hole in the ground as the engines would not have been able to produce the required thrust in time.