RetiredF4;
@PJ2 Your relevation is frankly speaking "shocking".
Well, this is just one pilot's/captain's experience - others can speak out if they wish. For me, I really, really encouraged guys/gals to hand-fly including manual thrust levers and there were almost 100% no takers. When doing line indoctrination I taught manual flight, what to be aware of when disconnecting the autothrust, how
Bangalore happened (the software's changed since then) and so on. I've only been a captain on Airbus aircraft. I hand-flew all the other types I was on but so did the captains, because we were better than the automation and it was, frankly, (serious) fun.
I think the Airbus is as easy and straightforward to hand-fly as any other type I've been on. The source of the "mystique" and therefore the fear of disconnecting and hand-flying is, in my view, twofold - 1) the airplane is complex with many modes including the autothrust, and 2) transition training and recurrent training focus competence and facility with the autoflight system and took competency at hand-flying (including thrust management) for granted.
The first time I did a proficiency check and IFR ride on the A320 it was entirely on the autopilot to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the system. It felt really strange and it felt like I was somehow cheating and not demonstrating what I knew, (because with work, the autoflight systems aren't difficult to understand, remember and use).
Subsequent recurrent training sessions worked in a manually-flown approach on raw data and we'd also do steep turns. I never saw the "S-turns" exercise again and I'll bet these days most would find it very difficult to complete.
In steep turns, autothrust was left on and we used the bird, (FPV symbol) for steep turns. It was a piece of cake...for the autoflight. All that was necessary was to keep the FPV on the horizon. Looking back, with autotrim it wasn't really a test for handling skills in my opinion. Cognitive connection to the machine reduced because of this, I believe.
I hand-flew all previous types and so did the captains I flew with. For the A320 I often flew from top-of-descent to touchdown and the airplane was a joy to fly manually. I did the same for the A330/A340 into terminals such as Hong Kong, Narita, Sydney, London, (after we were handed off to the final approach controller and out of the hold!), Frankfurt on the downwind, Honolulu, the Caribbean.
Towards the end I gradually stopped hand-flying this way, not because the SIDS and STARS got too demanding but because I began to realize that if anything were to occur during hand-flying, the first thing they'd look at would be the fact that the automation wasn't engaged and I'd have some explaining to do. I think that is the wrong approach, but...before we come to a black-and-white conclusion that this is all bad, I think there is good reason on the part of airline managements to require the use of automation and to teach/train/instruct thoroughly on its use, abuse and failure modes. They are doing what they think is best in terms of risk management in an increasingly busy airspace and terminal environment.
That said, when an approach incident occurred, hand-flying was increasingly discouraged Formal policies which provide guidance as to when one can do it, (low traffic volume/low work load for the other pilot etc) helped but the policies effectively prohibited hand-flying because entering non-busy terminals, especially on international routes, simply doesn't happen.
I think the vicious circle has been complete for about a decade now where discouraging hand-flying has indeed resulted in a loss of those important but invisible skills: instrument scan while busy, smooth, anticipatory manual handling of the aircraft and engine thrust...in short, "energy management" (and therefore fuel cost management) and crew coordination during manual flying conditions...the change is subtle but material to effectively and safely piloting the airplane.
The routine was established in the 90's - the autoflight was engaged right after the last flap/slat retraction and disconnected at about 400ft on approach at destination. There is NO opportunity for practise under such conditions but guys realized that the airline wanted the autoflight engaged and most didn't argue. I think they should have, as pilot associations should have, but that is a personal view.
This isn't a sudden, unexpected, surprising state of affairs. In one of the many, many AOM changes we experienced came the admonition that "
the autoflight WILL be engaged right after takeoff and disengaged on the landing roll". Aside from the fact that many of our approaches in the A320 were NPAs and couldn't be an autoland, the short-sightedness of such an airline policy was fought very hard and we won the freedom to hand-fly the airplane under an "automation policy". It was a step in the right direction but there was no formal acknowledgement that training was required and so the focus on autoflight comptetency remained and one hand-flew if one wished but it wasn't supported. I don't think we were unusual. We may be surprised and shocked but that's the way it was and, I suspect, is today.
These notions have been expressed since the mid/late eighties almost exclusively from pilots transitioning to fully-automated aircraft. The original reason pilots didn't want to hand-fly was because, "What's it doing now?" was a real question in the early 90's. "Click-click", (autopilot/autothrust OFF) was the solution until one sorted oneself out but pilots are primarily problem-solvers and sometimes will try to fix the problem (how do I get the OFFSET Page?...how do I get a hold entered again?), instead of changing horses and disconnecting while sorting it out. It's a cognitive thing, not a technical thing. It's why I keep saying that the UAS item shouldn't have been a problem...it's just straight manual flight, keeping it level and keeping thrust while the other guy/gal gets out the books. No big deal. Really.
So now we have to sort out why this one became a big deal and ended in an accident and in the eight or nine threads we've had a good go at it. Those here who are pilots know that this kind of thinking isn't unique, it's "what is". Nor am I alone in
knowing that the solutions are
comfort with the machine in all its normal and abnormal regimes and phases, and that the job of training (the company) and the job of learning (the individual pilot) isn't finished until that comfort is there. It isn't about notions like efficiency, cost-control or shortened training footprints, it's about pilots being familiar and therefore comfortable in their machine, no matter what it costs or how long it extends the training footprint. And it doesn't take tens of thousands of hours in a career, or weeks added onto the normal training footprint to achieve this comfort - it takes work, mainly on the part of the pilot, but also on the part of the airline in providing a supportive, comprehending management approach to foster this level of comfort.
In my view, the answers to AF447 are in one way not complicated. But these notions certainly are not "provable" in the traditional ways we are accustomed to accepting "evidence". There is no recorder that can record confusion, fear, competency or lack thereof. We must come to those conclusions, if possible, obviously by other means and these days, when Cartesian thinking invisibly rules (and narrows) our assessments of "evidence", we can miss some processes that may be relevant to the accident. The above "stream" tries to deal with this.
Getting this off my chest...sorry for the thread drift.