I make the following comment with the rider that I dont want my old job back and I realise that technology has moved on.
When the Flight Engineer was done away with we said at the time that no one had analysed all the things that we did in that role. All they did was look at what we operated and computerised it.One of the unacknowleged parts of our job was crew "stabilty". That duty didnt often come into play but in my 30+ years on the flightdeck it came out a few times.
We had problem captains who in a couple of cases became big problems not long after my experiences and more that a few problem F/Os. In time they were sorted, sometimes with subtle input from the FEs to management. In other cases their subtle problems became too obvious to ignore. But what we did provide was a qualified crew member in addition to the 2 pilots and that meant there was never a time when there was one person alone in the cockpit.That is reflectedin the fact that the type of problem being suggested here as a possibility didn't exist then.I even seem to remember a hijacker being taken out in Fiji by a well aimed bottle of scotch but that is another story and from memory the FE never got his bottle back either.
Recently I flew to Bali on holidays at the front of the cabin having scored some cheap business class seats. I was very surprised to see how long single pilot ops went on.
It seems along with automated flightdecks we have also introduced a less humanised cockpit into the mix and that is proving to be dangerous. If that applies to this sad case is still to be proven but there is enough evidence from the past to say my opinion is worth considering. How to get that level of human interaction back into the flightdeck is another subject.
Last edited by Wunwing; 26th Mar 2015 at 04:51.