Centaurus;
"The only way to teach today's pilots not to be frightened of hand flying is to ensure that type rating training in simulators starts off by teaching pilots how to fly manually without flight directors and auto-throttles for the first few sessions before automatics are introduced. After that, recurrent training in the simulator should include a high proportion of manual raw data flying."
Too many years ago I moved from Betty Windsors Flying Club to the awesome environment of the Bae146, having flown a B&W Artificial Horizon with the "W" symbol for the aircraft and the split horizon bar swimming around it, for 16 years, props and jets.
Initial sim training proved a problem, not that I couldn't fly on instruments, but that I was expected to program and follow the F/D bars, at all times, ab initio.
During the initial conversion session, I turned OFF the F/D bars with the comment that it was extra loading to program and follow them.
That airline's type chief trainer went apoplectic, froze the "box" and insisted I follow the magenta spider faithfully as no other course of action would be tolerated!!
Needless to say the subsequent details were handicapped by this slavish "attitude" (no pun intended!) and it was with greater effort and angst that I finally got onto the line.
And that was in 1987..............................?!
Now over a quarter of a century flying nice blue/brown A/Is, I still find myself "flying through the bars" and apologise to the child of magenta beside me as it is obvious I'm not following the "spider"!
What chance now in the 21st century is there of reversing the "you must use all automatics" from day 1 mantra?? Unless the XAAs get the message soon that the basics have got to be mastered BEFORE the luxury of the fancy bits can be used, then I fear that the recent CFITs due to part or no automation will continue and we in these pages will continue to ask "how could THEY do that?".
And of course we are excluding the possibility of FATIGUE as a serious contributory factor....!
