Detailed Discussion Desired: Flying in the Past

[bafanguy]

chris341,

Your question covers quite a lot of territory. Hard to know where to start or what to cite because change has been so vast and rapid.

I had the span from DC3 to glass cockpit (but not WB international). I'll assume my experience is not appreciably different in a broad sense from my fellows in other parts of the world; it may be and I just don't know it. Please excuse if that's the case.

From the standpoint of the change around strapping in for a day in the cockpit, there are three things that come to mind:

(1) The relationship with fellow employees has changed for the worse, particularly the cabin crew. Now there's a bullet-proof door between cockpit and your allies aft of the door…and opening it in flight almost involves an act on Congress. I'll ignore the matter of VERY large airlines vs smaller for those relationship differences post flight…they exist but perhaps for reasons of scale.

(2) Technology has "progressed" to the point where much of the mental work, and awareness of the total in-flight environment with all that encompasses, has been taken over by devices; these devices seem to promote less hand flying leading to a degradation of this basic skill. The advantage in such "progress" is much debated and I don't have the energy to enter that debate here.

I will say that it used to be that a pilot would have to assemble several, if not many, bits and pieces of information from now rather rudimentary sources (VOR and its radials, DME, IAS, altitude…and a paper chart) to produce a 3-dimensional picture of where the airplane was which would dictate what you should do about/with that in terms of what needed doing. I use the term "Mind's Eye" to say where these calculations took place and resided.

I also say the Mind's Eye has been blinded by "progress". There is now a generation of aviators who not only have no Mind's Eye but are not aware of the need for it as a baseline function. I knew that on the rare occasion I was dispatched without an FMS, I was likely to be flying solo as my partner was a bit too accustomed to FMS, DGFS and AP.

(3) The demands of getting from Pt. A to Pt. B remain the same at a base level.

This isn't a criticism of them; it's not THEIR fault. They can only function within the system as they found it.

There are likely other differences I don't recall.