Trainers should always have as much feedback as possible, because the pilot is learning where to put his hands. Once training for an Airbus FBW type rating, those muscle moves will be practiced in the simulator at first, and then on the aircraft. However, once type-rated and in the aircraft with us SLF down the back, pilots should not have to rely on such "training wheels" to control the aircraft.
(My bold)
Look Dozzy,
Its not a question of
knowing where to put their hands. Its a question of "feeling" the aircraft responsiveness to the inputs. I understand this is very difficult to explain to non-pilots. But the thing is that when a pilot is flying a non-FBW A/C he his much more "engaged" in the task. If the aircraft is flying faster the stick is harder to move. If by the contrary, the aircraft slows down, the stick is much softer to move. When you accelerate (and if the the throttles move, you have a double feed-back on the response of the aircraft) you feel the "need" to move the stick forward. The opposite is truth for deceleration.
For instance, I don't need to look at the airspeed instrument to "know" the speed of my Pitts. I can look for outside references when practicing aerobatics. The feed-back on the stick gives me the "notion" of the behavior of my aircraft and how much G I can pull. When we (because we are actually 3 owners of that Pitts), first got a sponsor and decided to re-paint our aircraft, it was clear to me, on my first acceptance flight, that the performance of the aircraft had changed, due to the general behavior of the aircraft thereafter, but especially due to the stick feed-back. (We later found out that the painting material used, was not appropriate for wings made of wood and canvas).
On the contrary, I have once taken-off an heavy weighted (252.2 Ton.) A340 that had one spoiler fault. According to MEL not only that spoiler had to be locked but the opposite one had to be locked also. Unfortunately the maintenance left the faulty spoiler unlocked and we took-off a couple of minutes after flight controls check. (when spoilers are fault, we don't get any information of spoiler position - up or down - in the Flight Controls ECAM System Display, only yellow crosses instep of a green spoiler number). We took-off without knowing that right hand spoiler number 6 was out. The behavior of a FBW aircraft is to slightly deploy spoilers on the opposite wing to equilibrate for the down wing moment created in flight. For me, the only impression I got was that the aircraft was "much heavier" than it was supposed to be. If this had happened on an A310 or on a B767, one would had noticed immediately the "need for compensation". When cleaning from flaps 1 to zero, despite of doing it 10kts over S speed, we had an "Alpha Lock" advisory and the climb took us longer than expected also. We have ended up our flight with a consumption of 4 Tons more than expected. This is to say that although no arm came to us due to this event, it took a longer time to understand what was going on. If it happened in a non-FBW aircraft, we would have noticed as soon as airborne.
This are just small issues but that make my case for the need for feed-back on flight controls.
If we can improve, why not do so?
Take care,
I'm flying tomorrow.