Originally Posted by OC
Machinebird
Sorry for the delay in responding but I would submit that what you were writing about is the perception not the actuality. Some commentators are adopting a them and us approach - pilots and airline companies. It more suggests to me a misunderstanding of just what it takes to run an airline than an actual perception of reality. It also ties in with a common human perception that things were better in the past whether it is true or not. It may indeed be that some things were better in the past but it is also true that some things weren't.
When you actually study some of the older accidents (and you don't even need to go back to the 70s to see this) you realise that there have always been pilots who have lacked the necessary skills. What automation has done is allowed a massive increase in the number of flights with a concomitant increase in the level of safety needed to sustain this. Of course you will find some negatives in the introduction of automation and the way it is used but this is due to the humans involved NOT the machines. It is clear that the skills of this particular crew played the significant role in the accident but this is not a general malaise as this accident is unique and other crews have dealt successfully with similar incidents. This alone should be sufficient to demonstrate that the accident is not indicative of a general problem.
OC, the delay was expected due to time zones.
There has been a major de-skilling of the airline pilot community by virtue of automation. The new guys coming up are very good in handling the automation and there are apparently an increasing number of them who when asked to hand fly an aircraft break out into a cold sweat. The environment makes it difficult to acquire and maintain essential hand flying skills. The periodic simulator training sessions are too infrequent to really maintain hand flying skills. Many of the formerly accomplished hand flyers have commented on their personal loss of the touch. There is no doubt that automation has permitted a high level of safety despite this apparent loss of skills, but when an aircraft loses critical systems and the automation is crippled, are these new pilots ready to take over and fly?
When I was actively flying, such a loss of control as AF447 experienced for the reason it lost control would be unthinkable. The weakest pilot in my squadron could fly solid instruments by hand (Where we sometimes saw problems was in headwork.)
With 32 UAS events and 1 loss of aircraft, the statistics for that condition are terrible. Is it a statistical fluke? I don't think so.Statistics doesn't work like that. UAS is clearly much more hazardous than ordinary flight.
IMHO AF447 could well represent the "canary in the coal mine" warning us that the hand flying deterioration has begun to cripple not only the third world airlines but also the legacy carriers.
Any airline pilot should be able to fly cruise by hand, cold without a warmup. If he cannot do that simple task, then he really doesn't belong in the cockpit.