Hello ex-BEA and ex-BOAC folks,
Been catching up on the last year of this fascinating thread. I enjoyed most of my career with your theoretical competitor down at Gatwick (HMG's "second force", never permitted to operate flights out of Heathrow) - until you gobbled us up in 1988. Perhaps my outside perspective may be of some interest, and it's not intended to be offensive.
I was already a BUA cadet at AST Perth in 1966 when the first BEA/BOAC course started there, presumably due to Hamble being oversubscribed. As you cadets had all passed the same selection processes at Hamble, it astonishes me that there should subsequently have been tribalism between you on the basis of a random (?) posting to BEA or BOAC. Sounds rather like school. But I suppose that - unlike ours - your jobs were so guaranteed, and you had so much spare time on your hands, that you could afford the luxury?
FWIW, we all had to do our copliot apprenticeships in secondment to associate companies of BUA, so had to wait several years before going on jets like the 1-11 and VC10. The up-sides of that were that we got loads of handling practice early-on, and when we got our first jet we were in a two-pilot crew - meaning we were never on an F/E's panel or a sextant.
Although in my tiny associate company we had more than our share of old captains - including ex-WW2 and retired BEA/BOAC/BSAA(!) - there was a culture of captains giving leg-for-leg, where possible, that was observed by all but two or three of them. We had several captains whose CRM skills would not be tolerated today, and a few lousy handlers, but many great ones too.
When we later became jet copilots in Caledonian-BUA, and had had our black balls removed, we resumed leg-for-leg handling. Like a captain's leg, that meant being PF for the whole flight, including taxiing (except on our B707s, where we didn't have a tiller).
AFAIK, monitored approaches were never trialled in BUA, Caledonian or BCAL.
There were one or two VC10 skippers whose handling was marginal on simulator checks, but the sim was not that representative in some respects. In the air on long-haul, the copilot was sometimes sidelined in the dialogue between the captain and F/E, but I don't think any of us was loath to speak up when necessary. One-Eleven cockpits were run as a two-man team, and I don't remember ever being left out of the loop, even if a few skippers were slightly non-standard. No airs and graces there.
Quote from Bergerie 1 (my emphasis):
"
I understand the underlying philosophy behind the monitored approach and have no doubt it worked well. My point is that, in a way that is similar to the 'overuse' of automatics on modern aircraft today, where pilots have insufficient practice hand flying, the BEA handover of control for most of the flight allowed some captains on Tridents to be too easily 'carried' by their co-pilots."
So what happened on the copilot's leg in half-decent weather? Was there not a complete role-reversal?
At the time BA took over BCAL, we were just introducing the A320 into service. We handful of crews - nearly all ex-BCAL for the first year or so - were generally resistant to the imposition of monitored approaches; knowing little about them and mostly not keen to learn. Fortunately, our fleet management was committed to making the A320 fleet the best in BA, and apparently all fleets would have to conform to them as a BA standard. We soon knuckled down, particularly when we moved up to LHR permanently after a summer of LGW ops.
If the destination wx necessitated an autoland, the captain had to do the leg, but in other respects the leg-for-leg philosophy was retained. It's fairly unusual for two consecutive landings to be affected. Our handover of PF duties to the PNL usually took place not at TOC, but just before the PL (landing pilot) conducted his/her pre-descent briefing. If the PL became visual early on finals, (s)he could take over early - configuration changes and checklist permitting. If the wx was worse than Cat 1, the captain would handle the G/A or autoland, but otherwise role-reversal was complete. It all became second-nature.
Up at LHR we gradually became aware that not only were the B747 fleets not conforming to the standard, but neither was the recalcitrant B737. I wonder what the situation is today, but any suggestion that the monitored-approach philosophy in BA might allow below-average captains to be propped up by their copilots simply doesn't make sense today.