Originally Posted by captjns
My F/Os will disagree with you about your statement regarding exaggerations
When I said I thought you were exaggerating, that did not mean I didn't believe you. I tried to say that,
unless you're not flying a "modern" plane, you're exaggerating when you decide not to use the automatics when there's a good reason to. Don't get me wrong: If you look at my previous posts you can see that I still do A LOT of basic flying in my A320 with everything switched off (except the engines
) and that I am a fierce defender of airline pilots having to maintain basic flying skills by taking the automation out whenever the conditions permit. The question is: What are you going to decide if the metar says that both cloud-base and visibility are very close to the minima for your Cat I ils approach? I'm sure that you and myself and all of our F/O's are ABLE to fly to the minima with the "needles centered" without F/D and without A/thr. (Our training manager joked that he would ask Airbus for a discount if we ordered our next A320's without F/D installed) I would think it's wiser to keep
at least the F/D on in such conditions. Chances are that will not happen more then once or twice/year.
I think that every pilot should fly manually (A/P, F/D and A/Thr off) very regularly when there's no reason not to, but I also think that when there is a good reason to use the automatics a wise pilot should do so.
I fully agree that autoflight systems are installed to reduce the workload for the crew and NOT because the crew can't fly without, but I really do not feel the need to prove that on the line with a full load of pax in marginal conditions even if I'm 100% sure that I CAN!