If I was a virgin 340 pilot getting upto 2 landings a month I would not think that practising my hand flying on the line was a good idea
Strange. I talked to a Virgin A340 pilot last year and he said there was no discouragement from handflying or for that matter getting rid of the FD and autothrust.
Originally Posted by COM cleaner
Doesn't your mob have the same automation policy as haughtney1 - avoid manual flight at all costs?
It does; my take on Haughtney's post was that he supports his compnay's policy.
The AF accident did not happen because of a lack of hand flying on every other sector. It happened because the wrong pilot was in the wrong seat at the wrong time. There was a failure to recognise the stall and carry out recovery on behalf of the handling pilot and PM was unaware of the inputs of PF due to side stick.
Absolute rubbish. Had the PF been practiced at hand flying at high altitude he in all probability would not have pulled the nose up so much and stalled the thing in the first place! "Hmm, this is strange, I'm hand flying, the power hasn't changed and we're climbing for the moon, better lower the nose a bit so she doesn't stall..."
The aeroplane was stalled, pure and simple, and the three pilots were so unskilled/practiced at scanning all the instruments, so unpracticed at taking in all the information they had in front of them, were so stunned by what was going on, that they sat there virtually doing nothing because they couldn't work it out. I agree that some whacko Airbus design features didn't help.
Every second you get practicing your IF scan ASI/VS/Altimeter/Attitude, actually looking at and feeling the response from your (even minor) control inputs when hand flying, will help you identify a completely odd-ball, totally weird situation and recover from it.