Originally Posted by
mross
By seat-of-the-pants-flying I meant flying using the feel of the controls to tell you what the aircraft is doing - the force feedback from the stick and pedals and the noise of the engine and airflow and the little clues that the early pilots used; the guys and gals who flew with no instruments. I have only flown little Cessnas but I do have a license!
Right, but one thing to be clear on is that light aircraft like your Cessna will have direct cable control to the flight surfaces. Jet airliners are a little different in that older short-haul types like the B737 and DC9/MD-80 will have hydraulic assist with cable backup and larger widebodies such as the B747, DC-10 and A300 as well as newer narrowbodies like the B757 are all-hydraulic. Nevertheless all of them have an "artificial feel" system which approximates and translates the forces on the flight surfaces to the flight controls.
Boeing's FBW system uses computerised force-feedback algorithms to provide artificial feel on the B777 and B787, and Airbus's FBW system uses passive spring feedback which is not linked to the surfaces in any way.
Therefore in a technical sense, control feedback on airliners is usually at one remove from what the flight surfaces are actually doing. Which is why a holistic approach using all the information available to a pilot, with an integrated scan paramount, is likely to get the best results.
I may be a wannabe, but I'm savvy enough to know that your pants (or more precisely your inner ear and nervous system) are more likely to lie to you about your situation than your instruments are.