Quite a few years ago now, a former BA senior pilot (retired) and I were studying on the same course. He was an interesting character with a raft of experience on everything BA flew up to that point, including the Concorde. He was also a check & training captain on everything he was rated on. He related the story of a line-check in a 747 into Hong Kong, during which in the downwind position for landing in VMC, he disabled all of the automatics with the intent of the crew undergoing check fly a visual circuit and land.
Without the automatics, the crew couldn't even
find the airport, clearly visible off their wing-tip.
That discussion took place probably the fighting end of 20 years ago now. Even then, this very senior and knowledgable pilot was raising concerns about the deterioration of pilots' manual flying skills in the face of advancing levels of automation.
Originally Posted by Wally MkII
As we all know an A/P can do the job far better than us mere mortals...
Until the automated systems reach the point where the say effectively "too hard" and completely disengage themselves, leaving a probably baffled and potentially disoriented imperfect human with atrophied manual flying skills to try and recover the situation.
The automatics can and
do do a more precise job of following the magenta line, as long as everything is trucking along alright. It's when things get a bit outside the programmed parameters and the automatics just bang themselves off that pilots are being dropped in the do-do! If the manual flying skills have been eroded and/or the pilot has settled into any level of automation complacency, you're in a world of hurt.
There was an excellent discussion elsewhere on PPRuNe recently, on the Colgan crash. Now, entirely from (imperfect) memory, it seems the co-pilot made a programming error which effectively led to an incipient stall, that went either unrecognised or inappropriately responded to by the PF. Whatever. Anyway, the PF wound up rotating the nose into the stall with known consequences. The training of
all pilots was mentioned as a potential... when we're training for stalls, what are we taught to do with the stick? We pull back, into the stall. Recovery commences after the aircraft has stalled -a conditioned response in this circumstance? Almost every pilot I know is well aware that pulling back at the 1st indication of a stall is an inappropriate response. Release any back-pressure and/or check forward with power going up... but did this guy know that? If not, why not? How many others similarly trained are out there? Interesting thought.
Originally Posted by PLovett
...is the direction that modern airline training is taking.
I wonder if, given that most pilots today are trained with the goal of achieving airline cadetship in an (IMO excessively) automated environment, perhaps the word "pilot" should be substituted for "airline" in that quote...
There have been countless threads here lamenting falling standards across the board, from GA to the airlines, from radio calls, to light GA aircraft flying 747 circuits... these matters are usually dealt with here in isolation. It's time we, as a profession, start looking at these matters as a whole. It's only then that we can truly start to address the issues and forge some sort solution. The regulators are apparently too gutless to do it, the airlines won't spend what the accountants consider to be an "unnecessary" cent on training -the impetus for change must come from within the pilot body. We have to individually lift our own game, collectively demand appropriately trained and experienced new hires and where appropriate establish effective, comprehensive mentoring programmes.