Having not ride a bicycle for a couple of years did not make me forget how to pedal one. So not having done candelles, loops, spins and barrel rolls for ages does not make me a dodo...I do fly manually when the situation allows it ( non PRNAV SIDs and STARs ) and I do my recurrent training and checks flying manually as much as possible. However to hear people go on and on and on with anecdotes after anecdotes of their " superior " acey flying abilities because they fly manually every second of their sortie is an insufferable experience!
The automation is not there to make life easier......in fact it makes life the much more harder; one has to be ever vigilant monitoring the performance of the autoflight system to ensure that there are no degradation in automation performance. It's like a frontline soldier ever watchful for snipers! And one has to be on top of automation use ( button pushing, if you may ) to detect automation degradation. A lot of automation degradation are due to performance degradation in other ancialllary or peripherial systems; one has to understand the interface and deal with it intelligently. Of course one can just click off the automation and revert to basic manual control, flying stick and rudder; well fine and good if you can do so by not busting PRNAV limits. However there are other automatic modes to mitigate the automation degradation...eg if you lose LNAV in PRNAV operations, you can use track sel with cross check of track deviation to attain almost equal performance capability in PRNAV airspace. I have seen stick and rudder aces immediately clicking of the autopilot and go manual using " superior stick and rudder techniques " only to mess up the whole operation and then swearing on their grand aunties graves that " automation is crap and we should stick to manual flying skills all the time ". I have seem in conducting sim checks that a lot of problems are caused by such stick and rudder aces who fouled up machine-human interface; in other words, ace pilot induced automation performance degradation.
Automation is there to optimise aircraft operations to facilitate economic operations, enhance ATC airspace utilisation, and extend airplane life with smooth operation. In economic operations and optimal airspace operations it reduces carbon emissions and noise pollution for environmental protection. Automation does not make a pilot's life easier...I hope the whole world gets it!
Last edited by kinteafrokunta; 23rd December 2011 at 23:46.