Flight International "Pilots must go back to basics>"

[Judd]

Flight International 8-14 April 2014 page 21 article by David Learmount. Headline "Pilots must go back to basics." Sub-heading "Flightdeck automation is rampant, and industry commentators believe it is time flight crews relearned how to actually fly."

If ever I have seen a case of flogging the proverbial dead horse, it this constant reiteration of something that pilots and commentators have been banging on about for nearly 40 years. In fact ever since the first glass cockpit was installed. For example.

A quote from the article: "Speaking during an open session at the end of the 25-26 March event (Royal Aeronautical Society's "Aircraft Commander in the 21st Century" conference in London), Capt Mike Varney of Airbus and Captain Steve Hawkins of BA separately came to the same conclusion: pilots have to be reintroduced to their aircraft as flying machines because both they and their employers have become obsessed with systems management, to the exclusion of flying. The operations and training leadership at both organisations have taken up the idea of tripping out the flight director and turning off the automatics at the beginning of type or recurrent simulator training sessions." Buy the magazine and read the rest of the article yourselves if so inclined.

All this carry-on about loss of basic flying skills blamed upon addiction to automatics, has been going on ever since D.P.Davies "Handling the Big Jets" was first published 48 years ago. David Davies saw this coming a mile away when he penned his advice to airline pilots at chapter 11 of his fine book. He wrote (edited for brevity): "Do not become lazy in your professional lives. The autopilot is a great comfort, so are the flight director and approach coupler. But do not get into a position where you need these devices to complete the flight. Keep in practice in raw ILS, particularly in crosswinds. Keep in practice in hand-flying the aeroplane at altitude and in making purely visual approaches."

The last paragraph has echoes of the Air France A330 high altitude stall and crash into the South Atlantic and the Asiana Boeing 777 crash on a visual approach to SFO.

Of course, most of today's airline pilots will privately concede their basic instrument flying skills are shot forever and that applies to junior copilots coming through the system who one day will take the left seat and follow their leaders in avoiding avoid hand flying like a plague. There is no doubt in my mind that automation dependency will increase further with still more sophisticated automatic pilots that are coming off the drawing tables.

That being so, what is the point in re-hashing the bleeding obvious in these feel-good expansive flight safety conferences that are known more for their networking attractions and meeting up for drinks with old mates, than serious decision making on such trivialities as sticking in the odd manually flown circuit (FD and AT on, of course) for regulatory box ticking purposes.

Forget the regulators. They are mostly toothless airline or charter pilot has-beens (it takes one to know one, incidentally!) after a nice secure Public Servant job who couldn't give a damn what the airlines do as long as the prangs are kept within sensible limits.