Swissair procedures
Swissair was very different from BA but shared some similarities.
The state airline on a per capita basis was four times the size of BA.
The procedures shared some common ground with both of the corporations.
80% of the pilots were Swiss, all of them were officers in the military.
The company was run by Swiss Germans.The majority were fighter and ground attack pilots.
The training was far more comprehensive than that I had received during both of my conversion courses in the corporations, although I received an abridged line training - ONLY 100 sectors with a SFO until my final line check.
Like BOAC they believed that not all pilots are suitable for command.
Unlike the rest of the known world copilots were not allowed to taxi, takeoff, fly the departure, nor use the brakes.
It was also the first occasion that I was taught comprehensively the pitch, power and configuration method of flying jet aircraft.
The author of Concorde stick and rudder book confirmed that Concorde was taught in a similar vein and this was unique in BA.
I cut my teeth using their procedures on the DC9 marks 32,33f, 34 and 51 virtually simultaneously. They didn't fly the same.
It was the first time that I really learnt how to throw a jet aircraft around and we practised neigh on every day raw data approaches.
One has to remember we had no wind information nor ground speed and the electronics were analog.
Our home base was in a basin surrounded by mountains and as well as katabatic winds we had the foehn - all of the ingredients of wind shear.
The co-pilot flew the monitored approach, generally raw data, manual throttle but with the flight director engaged. This was Swissair's philosophy of best use of equipment.
As others who have flown second generation jets/avionics know the flight director is basically a deviation indicator.
By knowing all of the expected power settings, rates of descent, the airfield wind and observing the crab angle one can often fly a more accurate approach without the FD which was needed for the go around.
Our limit was 200ft but we had a continue phase to 100ft, which was decided by the captain if he had some visual clues at 200 ft and allowed him to take control of a stable aircraft just before the flair.
I will add that we had to have landing configuration selected by 400 feet which in practice meant stable by 300ft. This is not problem if you are sick sufficiently well trained.
There were a couple of other nuances which allowed a higher approach success rate.
In the UK I understood the minimum descent altitude was what it said but the Swiss interpreted it as a decision altitude which meant one looked out at 200 feet then made the decision which gave 30ft plus grace.
We also were allowed to "look and see" if we had any doubts about the reported visibility; i.e. We didn't have an approach ban due to low viz.
I departed Heathrow one night with the Transmissometers covered by a few inches of fog. It closed as soon as we got airborne.
One might think that the flying procedures were extreme but commercial load dictates a safe, comfortable, reliable service; the mix of our clients was testimony that the Swiss achieved this up until the late 80s when LX was becoming dominant on our short haul routes and the final nail was SR111.
The build up of LX tripled my time to command but this was partly due to our salaries - my emoluments for the first year was more than double SFO BA and when I always had a months leave in the school summer holidays to spend some of this loot who is go to complain.
Apologies if I am rehacking some old ground but the earlier tail strike thread had some comments that needed clarification.
The change of BOAC philosophy I got from a senior manager of the time and perhaps I should have wrote incidents; like SR some incidents are kept very quiet and only last week I was told of another by the guy who whipped out the FDR and gave it to the captain to destroy who just happened to be the chief pilot.
Safety is never enhanced by hiding incidents as the Munich and Staines disaster have shown.