Having recently had a case of 'i must fly' because nothing else was reliable, it brings home the need to preserve ones own flying capability.
I was intrigued when years ago I moved over to 737 from smaller stuff, that guys were putting the auto pilot in so quickly. Clean on the EFIS, before flaps up on the NG. I would happily (ignorantly) fly up to cruise level, until someone in the training department pointed out that we shouldn't hand fly above 20000/fl200. Preferably, 10000.
Why become a pilot if you don't want to fly? Was my question.
Imagine the fun when we lost A/T before departure. Suggested option was to return to stand, and get it fixed. We didn't. No reason not to push with a failed A/T, if its known about. Why not continue after taxi out, if it chooses then to fail. As it turned out, parts were unavailable for weeks, anyway.
By all means have the familiarity with the automatics to make best use of them, and how flch/lvlchg or V/S can be more use than VNAV at times. But not at the expense of being able to manually do it when it's required.
8/10 years on from when those aircraft were fairly new, or at least not so old, it could have been that I'd been letting my ability to fly it degrade, while simultaneously the fleets that I might fly have aged and degraded systems now exist as a consequence.
Which means more failures, even if fairly benign ones.
In an age when the emphasis is with minimising fuel burn due cost reasons, to be confronted with not only very limited time, but also technical problems that need a last minute manually flown, but still crew coordinated effort, then having the confidence in the skills that we developed when we eagerly joined this industry should be a matter of personal pride.
It also doesn't half make the next sim check easier if you don't have to spend time getting over the pilot induced oscillations incurred when you drop the automatics out.
(And now they are proposing cars that operate automatically. Boring!)
Last edited by Shiny side down; 14th Nov 2012 at 12:31.