Originally Posted by
deSitter
That's a patently absurd argument. Minus the gewgaws of automation, what training would a pilot receive? Surely how to combat a stall - or even simply to understand the risk! I get the strong feeling that these modern crew lack basic knowledge of flight dynamics, as well as the simple kinesthetic understanding of being in charge of a large and fast machine.
But you don't even get your PPL unless you've done stall and spin training and understand the basics to at least some degree. Hell, I was taught about stalling before they even let me up in a Chippy for my first AEF flight!
The problem is that this training is not being maintained by the airlines.
The entire issue of the sidestick is absolutely revealing - the body is completely disconnected from the machine - you don't even fly it, you point it here and there and wait for error reports. It's a video game in the sky.
There hasn't been a new airliner design with directly-connected controls since the '60s. Everything since then has been variations on mechanical and electronic artificial feel while the hydraulics do all the heavy lifting. As I've argued previously, the yoke can be a crutch - just look at the crews who didn't let them go even after it was clear that they'd lost all hydraulic pressure.
If your company doesn't like handflying on the line, pressure them to make you practice it in the sim, or get yourself into a flying club that will allow you to practice maneouvres in your off-duty time.
Let's not forget that last year, a Libyan crew flew a perfectly good A330 right into the ground.
Due to which it could be argued (though I'm not arguing) that the Airbus guy who said they didn't recommend handflying on the line had a point!
The entire philosophy of cheapness coupled to gizmoism is responsible. Everybody's an expert. Everyone gets a trophy. Don't we all feel good? But it's cold at the bottom of the sea.
The only widebody that tried to use old-fashioned techniques exclusively was the DC-10, and that led the designers to miss points of failure that they didn't take into account, like the pressurised air volume being so much larger than anything they'd built to date that a significantly large hole in the fuselage could collapse the floor, under which they'd laid the supposedly redundant controls - all of them.
Funnily enough, one of AA's senior captains didn't like what the Douglas guys said about it being impossible for the DC-10 to lose all hydraulics (and consequently all flight controls), and was able to wangle enough simulator time to learn how to control the thing using differential thrust. His name was Bryce McCormick, and the only reason that there weren't significantly more air crash fatalities in 1972 than there actually were was because he happened to be the captain on the flight on which it happened.
Ultimately engineering is there to solve problems, and the FBW advances were designed to solve the problems of reducing weight and thereby extending range and capacity, exposing less of the hydraulic system to risk by making more use of redundant electronic controls and as an added bonus, using obsolete, reliable computer technology to assist pilots with the workload. Airbus's relative newcomer status and lack of legacy models also meant they could get a jump on flight deck commonality across the range.
To hear you talk you'd think that the FBW systems of both Airbus and Boeing were designed with no pilot input at all, when in fact pilots were heavily involved in the specification for both. You're also conflating FBW with the advent of FMS systems, which predated the A320's arrival in service by 16 years, and were enthusiastically adopted by Boeing (in the 757 and 767) and McDonnell-Douglas (in the MD-11) shortly afterwards.