Originally Posted by
Sir Niall Dementia
HC and Crab;
Re-reading your posts on this thread I suspect you are thinking the same things, but from different directions. Automation is now a massive part of flying modern rotary and it carries with it potentially massive pitfalls. The last type conversion I did spent a couple of days on how the thing was bolted together, what the limits are etc. and then ten days on the automation. The sim was a day of how it flies, followed by several days of how to programme it. Line training was really about the automation (new type, same job and routes)
BUT, a pilot still has to be a pilot, he still has to be able to fly the thing. Every six months we all go through OPC/IRR which really doesn't cover automation, but in those six months unless a pilot has been practising how to fly without the automatics then his skill will fade to an extent.
I believe that due to time and budgetary constraints not enough is given on conversion to automation, and scarily a single pilot is then reliant on line training and crew room help. The other snag is that the requirement for OPC/LPC really does not apply to a hugely automated aircraft. That is the main reason that we changed training here. OPC/LPC as per the requirement, line training covering the rest, but a good chunk of manual flying in between LPC/OPC to ensure that manual skills don't fade so that when the automatics do go wrong it is not a crisis to deal with it.
SND
Do you not see the fallacy of that - ie you accept that the role is mostly about automation management, with all its pitfalls, and yet you accept that the OPC/LPC is completely unrepresentative of the way the aircraft is normally flown, such that pilots have to learn automation management skills by means of crew room gossip?
Of course pilots have to maintain basic skills, and indeed in the case of those with a brand new shiny CPL(H) done on a puddle jumper, have to acquire those skills. But surely the OPC/LPC should reflect the normal way the aircraft is operated. Manual flying skill checking should be a small part of that, not the major part.
And yes of course we should practice manual flying skills under the right circumstances, but it seems to me that most of the industry is still lingering in the dark ages. It just doesn't "get" automation even now, still seeing it as cheating.
The only surprise is that gangs of pilots are not rampaging the hangars at night smashing up the new fangled machinery that is depriving them of their birthright to fly manually.