"Do you agree, about several examples of incidents/accidents at well known carriers besides THY, like AF/LH/TAM and others, where the crew lost track due to "complexity" of their ship?"
I disagree, slightly. I am giving a Type qualification course at the moment. As with many airlines it is self-funded by the student and thus is kept to a minimum number of sessions. As with other airlines the type rating is combined with an OPC. A few decades ago, in my early life entering the airlines, we were taught to fly the a/c in the TQ course, with SOP's attached. The line operation and SOP's were refined during line training. The initial emphasis was knowing how the a/c worked, how the systems worked and how to fly it. The line training refined these skills and expanded how to operate it within the airways system and a multitude of busy airports and small visual airfields. Understanding the complexities of the systems came with our 'apprenticeship', which had started in the sim.
Nowadays the TQ course seems to shift the emphasis more towards SOP's during the manoeuvres, some of which are with normal & non-normal scenarios. Some of the non-normals scenarios are box-ticking on the LST form, very few are in depth training of the gotchas and pitfalls. The handling emphasis is aimed at the LST items.
Thus IMHO it was not the 'complexity of their ship' which sucked them into trouble, it was the lack of training = understanding of those systems. This ignorance created a complex system when in fact with proper training it would have been quite simple.
One wonders if the policy of many airlines to use relatively (2 years experience) inexperienced F/O's as SFI's is correct. They have followed the self same course of knowing what to do, but not the how & the why. They then pass on this diluted knowledge to the next generation of cadets who will become the next generation of SFI's and so the downward spiral of knowledge continues. SOP's are so intense that the first thought of a pilot in a less than ideal situation is to ask, "what does the book say?" Second, if at all, comes "what is the most sensible airmanship thing to do?" By the time you arrive at the 2nd option it might be too ate as the a/c was still travelling very fast during the first phase of questioning confusion. It is noticeable that I've been told by newish F/O's that flying with the old farts is usually more relaxing than with the newbie captains. The oldies do what is best instinctively, and within the book boundaries, but are not afraid to bend the SOP's; the newbies are terrified to even blow at the boundaries and thus delay making some decisions and then have to race to catch up. All old farts were newbies once, but mostly with a longer and deeper apprenticeship than today.
IMHO, if the industry is gong to continue making captains with relatively low hours then the training of manual skills, and especially systems knowledge and understanding of all their possibilities, needs to be more in depth to compensate for the shorter apprenticeship. Too many commands can be given to those whose prof checks are above average and SOP knowledge is perfect. SOP's can not cover all eventualities. Most incidents and accidents started quite subtly and the human intervention, or lack of it, caused a can of worms to develop, when it was preventable. And that's a whole other discussion about a good crew being preventative rather than reactive. Slavishly following SOP's is not always preventative, but that was touched upon in an earlier thread.
Knowledge is power: ignorance can be painful in the extreme.
Last edited by RAT 5; 15th Jan 2013 at 13:40.