it might start to get us all into thinking about raw data as being a normal procedure, and it would help us hone our flying and prevent ourselves becoming lazy by not allowing our skills to atrophy.
In 80's & 90's with the various airlines I flew for B732/757/767 this was the norm. It was encouraged by pilot orientated DFO's. Indeed, in non-radar, non-ILS Greek & Caribbean islands this is what we did, day or night. The a/c were not equipped for fancy LNAV/VNAV/RNAV approaches, neither were the airfields.
Why have those skills atrophised? (is that a word?)
1. The pilot was considered the most likely source of error and incident/accident initiator. Technology was pumped onto the a/c to takeover from the pilot in the belief this would eradicate much of the errors.
2. Airlines are no longer managed by pilot orientated people. (Indeed I know of many where DFO's are not pilots, they are business men. The first pilot in the management chain is CP and he is usually office bound 90% of the time concerned more with budgets than piloting standards. If there are no crashes then everything is fine.)
3. The CPL/MPL has been diluted by 40% of hours and focuses on MCC & CRM and systems management, not flying.
4. The airlines have expanded rapidly with low experience cadets from said diluted CPL/MPL courses.
5. Rigid SOP's have been designed to allow this expansion with low experience pilots. One aspect of those SOP's is maximum use of automatics. Thus the TR courses are focused heavily on use of automatics as per SOP's. Too little handling, and too little in-depth training of the automatics. (you only need to know enough to do the job, not cover every eventuality).
6. Commands are now achieved with 1/2 the experience of earlier generations. These rigid SOP's are needed for the low experienced captains as well as the low experienced F/O's. And the in-house SFI's come from that same stunted background.
7. Manual/visual approaches are considered less safe and less efficient (when they result in a GA) and so are discouraged.
8. Most operational decisions about the culture of the airline are made by business men focused on the bottom line and not by people wishing to attain & maintain a high piloting standard for their crews.
It is a conundrum and no easy quick fix. To fix something someone has to decide it's broken. Is there that perception on a wide enough scale? i.e. there needs to be an incentive & motivation to take the initiative. There are airlines who have pilot orientated management and strong high standard piloting cultures, but they look after themselves and do not drive the whole industry.
The early days of having experienced captains who encouraged such a culture is a thing of the past. The companies had the FCTM as their basic SOP manual and tweaked it to suit internal procedures and cultures. They then gave you the a/c, defined a task and said "go and do it, be efficient and be safe." You had the tools and you had the knowledge and used those tools in the best way necessary to complete the task, within company SOP's. There were various ways to skin the cat. Now rigid SOP's give you only one option and you are trained to that end. When circumstances require discretion & deviation the knowledge is not there to choose the other options. The knowledge data base is too small.
That wonderful video 'Children of the Magenta Line' highlighted much of which we speak, but I wonder what effect it has had on philosophies? Within the host airline I hope the HOT had the influence & authority to carry through with his philosophy and make changes. I wonder if HOT's in todays rapidly expanding airlines are allowed such radical ideas, and if so do they have any influence & authority to implement them.