gums;
What "de-confuses" the airplane is flying it like any other airplane. I don't think I was unusual in the way I thought about the A320/A330/A340...I was never "aware" that there were "protections"...it was flown like a DC8, or a Lockheed or a B767 - just never took anything for granted. It is astonishing that this should be permitted to change as it is so fundamental to staying alive and keeping others who are with you alive.
Demonstrating one's knowledge of the autoflight should be one of many exercises instead of the way the entire sim exercise is conducted. These days I suspect one risks drawing criticism if one insists on hand-flying some exercises. But the instructors have to sign the sheets saying such stuff was covered, so the sheets have to change.
Raw data, non-FD, manually-flown (including autothrust OFF), ILS and non-precision approaches ought to be regular exercises in recurrent sims.
The beancounters and even ops managers may resist that thinking but indications are, here in the Report and in the US particularly after Colgan, (as mentioned in the Report) that it is time to re-prioritize skills, teaching/training, standards and checking.
Last edited by Jetdriver; 8th Jul 2012 at 10:24.