Automation Dependancy
Automation Dependancy is real and it is happening......to everyone.
I came from bush flying, and slowly worked my way up the greasy pole.
Now, flying a bus for an asian airline I can DEFINATELY tell you my flying skills are going down and my Dependancy on automation is increasing.
When Asiana crash their 777 in SFO with 1 million km vis. all the western world said "that's because they never do visual approaches, they need to do more". But most airlines in Asia said "that proves that visual approaches are dangerous, the pilots should not do them".
So now, I can't do visual approaches, the closest I can get to it is hand fly raw data from a max 45 degree intercept of the localiser. Wow.....lucky me.
If we are flying out of somewhere (not China) we might hand fly up to cruise altitude. That's it. That's all the manual flying I get to do. And I have to 'fight' to get that opportunity.
That's because I'm an old bushy that believes in actually flying th plane.
The younger ones that don't have the bush and turboprop experience from (due being cadets) will 'fight' to not have to do it.
So their automation Dependancy is already a well established cancer, and mine is (sadly) growing by the day.