Originally Posted by
DozyWannabe
That's just it though - I think that a lot of posters here are putting too much into this "Children Of The Magenta" scenario, which is not necessarily the case. After all, the ex-Air Force Captain of the Birgenair B757 did exactly the same thing as the AF447 crew, and he was a veteran.
And let's not forget, there are far fewer smoking holes with automation at this kind of level than there were when handflying was more prevalent in the early part of the jet age.
Frankly a lot of this "much better in my day" routine smacks to me of people who miss their youth, then see the ongoing changes in their industry - and it makes them feel old. No-one enjoys that feeling - but I swear there's a lot more to this case and others that have been conveniently swept into the "Magenta" pile without sufficiently examining the evidence at hand.
These aspects can all link together,
In one life in the nice shiny transport you follow the magenta line and if you are lucky and it is your 'turn' you may get to hold the controls for a few minutes in an 8 hour flight but only with full system support.
In another life you fly a sailplane that is responsive to the controls even if you have to use full deflection at times, stalls are big nose drops that cannot be overcome by even full back stick. And you get that wind noise that gives you the impression of speed....
Then one dark and stormy night the nice shiny transport decides to have a problem - and you are in a sub-state of Alternate law which you have NEVER flown and you are at close to the ceiling of the aircraft. You have to fly manually - and you revert to flying manually the way that you do in sailplanes and perceive the performance as you do in sailplanes - it can't have stalled - the nose is still above the horizon and that noise means we are going fast....
If there is
no sufficient training then people will revert back to what they knew from previous experience - it is all they can do. If your previous experience was sufficient that's fine. But it would appear that modern 'streamlined' training and limited experience is starting to show signs of insufficiency.