Originally Posted by PJ2
But the character of accidents is changing wherein almost all accidents are not the result of mechanical failure, navigational error, serious weather encounters or mid-air collision but of LOC and CFIT which have HF elements to greater or lesser degrees.
PJ2, Bubbers, OK465, and many other old hands who actually used to be proficient in hand flying are now retired. The newer pilots have few opportunities to hand fly their aircraft and operate mostly supervising the navigation computers of their aircraft and communicating with ATC, the second and third legs of the Aviate, Navigate, Communicate priority mandate. Why should they be comfortable stepping into the Aviate role when situation or system failures demand it? This is not an A or B thing. Pilots who are expected to save they day when everything else goes south had better be comfortable aviating, but how can they do this in a regime that demands extreme precision in altitude maintenance? That was the point I hope I made earlier with the concept of an autopilot protected training mode where the autopilot would ensure an acceptable level of altitude maintenance and the pilot would attempt to operate inside a deadband where the autopilot would not interfere. If the deadband was exceeded, the autopilot would make a brief correction toward the center of the band (and perhaps a brief disrespectful noise
to let the trainee know he had been corrected.) The result of this training opportunity would be pilots with fully functional scans who were well attuned to their aircraft's handling characteristics.
The rusty pilot problem is one of the regulator's making. It is they who must fix the problem. In their haste to provide higher traffic capacity, they have ignored the long term problems they have created. They are going to have find a way for pilots to actually fly again within the route structure, and they should probably mandate hand flying minimums time requirements for pilots. AF447 is one of their chickens that came home to roost.