A Squared – hey, a Herc pilot is close enough in my book. I will say that I, too, was surprised at the apparent lack of knowledge evident in the airline industry about the vulnerabilities of airplanes should there ever be an over application of flight controls – particularly control reversals – and most particularly reversals to the stops.
I think that many instructors (usually they were the “older” heads at most airlines) who advocated the use of rudder (like those training at AA for their AAMT -?- training course) were perfectly correct that it was permissible to use rudder in the manner they described – which was not “if you use it, use ALL of it” … but rather, “use it for what it can do,” … and I believe they either didn’t have the time (in a typically limited airline training environment) or they were under the impression that those in their class had a similar background to their own, where it was drummed into your head to “remember where you are and what you are doing – and specifically that cowboys are on horseback, not at 30,000 feet and at 75% the speed of sound.” The portions of the AA course with which I was somewhat familiar, advocated the judicious use of rudder – and use of full rudder WAS acceptable, if it was necessary – but those cases were acknowledged to be few and far between. In fact, the times where rudder use was deemed acceptable in that portion of the course I saw (flew), was when the nose was unacceptably high and the crew could not get it down. The procedure was to roll the airplane and (the word used was “pressure”) then “pressure” the down side rudder to bring the nose back to the horizon.
In fact, my recognizing the fact that knowledge of control applications in transport category airplanes was particularly sparse in the airline community is what put me on a “bent” to increase the requirements for training. I’m not describing merely an increase in the time spent in training, but to train on what is needed to be known and to train to a competent level of performance. I know that many do not like the idea of additional requirements – particularly if they come from a regulatory agency – but, honestly, I don’t know of another way to get where we need to be. That also put me into a frame of mind that says we all should not just take what we are given from “the man,” but that all of us have a right to expect (in fact demand) that the regulators demand every bit the same level of competence in their employees at their jobs as they expect from the industry. There are a few individual regulators I know who feel the same way – and we should be including them in our discussions on the kinds of things this industry needs. And, I may be overly simplistic, but I don’t think the industry can get there without the regulators being involved up to their necks.
Oops – sorry – as you can see, I can get on my soap box pretty easily … I’ll step down now and go about my business. Anyway – thanks for your participation – and your professionalism.