These pilots who do not monitor the speed; what are they looking at on approach??
On the 777 and Airbus FBW family, the speed tape is right next to and on the same screen as the AI, so if pilots are not watching the speed tape then they cannot be watching the AI or the altitude tape either. WTF? As several have said, speed is a very basic parameter of the most fundamental airmanship.
A visual approach means that the tracking/navigation is done by looking out of the window, but a pilot still needs to regularly look at the other instruments to check speed, altitude, vertical speed, N1, etc.
Oakape; I mostly agree with you but I don't think most pilots are lazy or can't be bothered, it is simply that we seem to be entering a very dangerous training philosophy, where the latest SOP change or fuel saving initiative is taking preference in the SIM over the practising of motor skills.
Whoever just said that there should be an hour of manual flying practise at the beginning of a SIM without jeapordy is spot on! This is something I have said myself: Let each pilot do 5 EFATO's, 5 manually flown go arounds, and 5 go arounds using the automatics before anything else is done.
Take a musician's instrument away for 6 months and then give it back and ask them to play something complicated, and get it right first time with no practise. Would they be able to do that? Err, no. What do bands do before a tour? They book into a studio for a couple of weeks to rehearse all their material.
We can't practise go arounds on the line with passengers, but how about as well as us doing and recording a certain number of Autolands in every 6 month period, our training manager should require that we all do the same with manually flown, raw data approaches with no flight directors and manual thrust - obviously in appropriate conditions?
If nothing else, this might help keep our instrument scans and manual flying up to scratch.
Last edited by Uplinker; 18th Oct 2014 at 10:49.