Aces ?
Yeager
Judging by your handle I'm guessing you have never made a mistake during a sim.
As for the rest of us mortals, I've taken the course from the 400 to the ECL driven airplanes. The courses are getting shorter every year. As such you are required to do just as you suggest and train YOURSELF and partner in the IPT or cafeteria etc. That is not a replacement for actual training. While good for practice once procedures and mouth music are known, it is not good for pilots new to the machine. Nor is it good for pilots who have been off for awhile. The books just don't back it up. Add to this the CPT is done from home now and you really are training in isolation. Home study may work but the training department should encourage live feedback and pier communication to ensure the info is understood.
So what happens is SOP/Convention creep. That's where self taught pilots begin to add or delete things and gradually come up with their own slight take on SOPs and conventions. I've seen it in line guys, checkers and CPs. None of it unsafe or even worth mentioning at most airlines, but a 3 here for sure.
Is this a problem ? Well in an airline with big picture thinking and checkers with the experience to see real problems as opposed to interpretations of convention, then NO . In an airline where the minutiae and pet SOP crowd dominate and subsequently good pilots' careers and health are the casualties, then yes it is a problem.
Having had real emergencies in aircraft and talking to others who have also had serious situations and emergencies, it goes extremely well, but the mouth music etc. may not be perfect. Does the training kick in ? Absolutely !
The other problem is the SOPs themselves, while they are getting better, there are still holes big enough for interpretation to creep in. We need to write a tighter script, so that when learning a new airplane, cockpit ECL or whatever, you can reference specific written mouth music in the manual, not buried in best practice, power points or any of the many locations needed to be researched to put it all together.
If you want anal pedantic perfection then put it in the books. If it's not in the books then allow some latitude with a pleasant comment in the de-brief.
Cheers Fly Safe
FG
Last edited by Five Green; 12th Apr 2013 at 16:55.
Reason: Syntax police