isn't it is good practice to be 'propped up' by the checklist?
No. It is not good airmanship to use a checklist as a crutch to tell you what to do because you are too damn slack to know what to do. There are supposed to be two professionally qualified pilots in the cockpit. It takes a split second for one pilot to glance over to quietly check the switching is correct. You would be staggered or dismayed to see as we have in the simulator the number of pilots during recurrent training that have forgotten how to cross feed or confgure bleeds. When questioned the answers are all the same. We use a checklist so why bother knowing what to do?
