Originally Posted by
FDMII
Being a drone is a choice, not a mandate. Relinquishing skills and standards is a choice, not a result or a necessary outcome of automation. Awareness of one's skill level is a personal responsibility. It takes conscious effort and continual awareness; that is the price of professionalism.
I disagree.
Many/most airlines make it impossible to practice proper hand flying let alone anything tricky.
How many times will a captain say "It's max crosswind today, best I hand fly the whole approach to make sure I can still do it if the automatics failed" or "IMC and bumpy today, why don't you hand fly to keep your skills up"?
Never.
Not his fault, the system penalises those that want to practise.
The amount of actual flying done by a modern airline pilot is miniscule.
It is not possible to be good at anything or remain good at anything without practise.
Reading books and 6 monthly sims are not a tenth of what is required to be "good" at something. Airline pilots aim for adequate, and those that believe themselves to be good are merely judging themselves against the standard around them with is very poor.
There is a reason that militaries require a far greater selection of monthly currencies to be operational.
Many pilots believe that because they can run the "script" of the average flight smoothly that they are competent pilots.
They are wrong.
That thing you do every day is not being a pilot.
That script is what you do for your whole airline career to fill time while
waiting to be a pilot.
Being a pilot is what happens when you suddenly have to land in the Hudson.
When you lose all Hydraulics.
When your Pitot tubes Ice up.
In my time in Airlines, I only flew with one "good" pilot.
He was frankly incredible.
To this day I have no idea how he managed to maintain the standard of flying he did whilst operating airliners.
I certainly could not maintain the standard that I expect of myself, so I left to fly toys that require my input to fly.