Practice makes perfect and if the company policy is to stay on automatics from lift off to near touch down, then that only leaves the flight simulator for honing manual flying skills.
Where simulator time is dictated by costs and company policy requires full use of automatics in the simulator, this leaves only a few minutes of effective time per session for the pilot to practice manually.
There's a problem. Use of full automatics in the sim. Seems to me that sim sessions ought to emphasize training scenarios one can't do in the aircraft.
For example, there are many operators who regard simulator practice at unusual attitude recoveries in IMC as a total waste of time. Often the instructor hasn't got a clue how to instruct on these manoeuvres anyway. Which is one reason why there has been an increase in loss of control in IMC accidents in recent years.
Until authorities bite the bullet and insist more emphasis be placed on pure flying skills versus automatic pilot monitoring skills, the current trend towards loss of control in IMC will not reverse
How can such a fundamental flying skill set be a waste of time?
Is this a symptom of institutional worship of autopilot?
This scares the hell out of me.
I am required to fly commercially next month to the east coast for a business meeting. You are suggesting that in some companies, skills necessary for IFR competency are being institutionally neglected, and allowed to atrophy. The flying public need to be warned.
RWA,
Then, of course, came the stall warning. And the PF seems to have responded by carrying out the prescribed drill at the time - 'TO/GA power and seek to maintain altitude.'
Ian W
It just seems to me that perhaps there was only one chance to recover from what happened and that was at the top of the zoom holding full nose down and reducing power which should have bunted the aircraft back into a flyable state. But the 'standard' stall recovery of NU to 5deg and TOGA was precisely the opposite
.
The training issue.
IF stall training is restricted to "near the ground environments" THEN the one time you stall at altitude you are playing catch up.
Based on a number of incidents related in the past two years on this topic, some crews in the past have caught up, this crew was unable to, as were some of the others in the past.
The question is, does BEA cover this in the final report? How much emhpasis?
We shall see.