A few years ago in the simulator I was required to upgrade an experienced B737 first officer from RH seat to LH seat. This was in the days when the Australian CAA licencing system has first class endorsements and second class endorsements. First class endorsements were for captains and first officers were given second class endorsements. As expected back then, the second class endorsement was not recognised outside of Australia and that meant some pilots could not get jobs overseas despite being highly experienced.
This particular pilot had no problem whatsoever operating from the LH seat. At the end of the endorsement training we had time to spare and I asked him if he would like to practice some unusual attitude recoveries in IMC. He thought about it for a moment before saying he thought UA's were a bit of a waste of time. Anyway, he reluctantly gave it a go. The simulator was set up for a un-commanded steep pitch up at 500 ft agl after take off. Airspeed loss is dramatic. This had really happened some years previously in USA and by superb handling the USA pilot had rolled sharply through 60 degrees to get the nose to drop and cleared a building by 100 feet in the recovery.
In the event, our pilot in the simulator was completely caught by surprise when it happened at 500 ft in the simulator as he expected the UA's to be done at 10,000ft. He tried forward elevator to stop the immediate speed loss but to no avail. With the nose going through 50 degrees nose up, he made no attempt to roll to the nearest horizon to get the nose to drop which would have saved the day. To my astonishment, he pulled both engines to idle and the simulator gave up the ghost and fell out of the sky.
In short and despite several thousands of copilot hours on automatic pilot on the 737, he simply didn't have a clue. Certainly he was unfamiliar with the pertinent chapter in the FCTM about UA recovery technique.
I suggested he have another attempt - this time rolling to the nearest horizon. I even offered to slip into his seat and demonstrate the recovery technique. He looked at his watch and reiterated he thought UA's were a waste of valuable simulator time and that in any case he had an appointment elsewhere. In other words he had stuffed up big time and refused to admit it.
This episode proved to me that automation dependency will continue to be the shadowy danger in the flying of jet transports. It beats me that time and again we see regulators and ops management paying lip service to manual handling skills but have yet to schedule comprehensive simulator training to mitigate autopilot dependency. One well known Middle East carrier boasted that they had added one extra hour per year of manual handling. What a laugh that was. In other words extra safety measures that involve simulator training are seen as a unnecessary cost impost.
The occasional raw data ILS to tick a regulatory box is virtually a waste of time as it does not scratch the surface in terms of manual handling. I believe we will see more future instances of loss of control in IMC as pilots are forced into more and more automation by their ops management.
So much valuable simulator time is wasted on button pushing and excessive check list reading exercises. In turn, this must only increase automation dependency. IMHO, to counteract ever-increasing automation dependency, 50 percent of all simulator training should be devoted to non-automatics handling in IMC - and that includes high altitude flying. High altitude stall recovery skills (37,000 ft) and landing configuration stall recovery skills (1000 feet AGL) are vital.
Last edited by Centaurus; 17th Feb 2015 at 11:30.