Originally Posted by
cxorcist
I have to agree with Luggage on most of this. CX is a toxic Petri dish when it comes to flying skills. This rears its ugly head time and again when we are asked to fly a visual approach with nothing more than a PAPI, or God forbid, the CRI VOR 13L without full RNP AR automation.
Face it colleagues, CX pilots' hand flying skills suck. Turning off the flight directors and A/T only happens above 1000' once every blue moon. I personally try to do it more often, but it usually gets the PM very nervous even after having briefed it and I hardly ever see that from others.
The 3:1 rule seems lost on most of our younger pilots. Many have no clue what energy state / altitude they should be at for given distances. They're just relying on the VNAV path. Did they ever learn it, or have they just forgotten or become too task saturated for it?
Luggage is right. We aren't very good, and certainly not proportional to the egos we read on here. Most of us could use some "regional" time to sharpen up, and especially our lesser experienced colleagues who never flew it in the first place.
A man I can relate too. Hearing things like 3:1 rule, hand flying etc is music too my ears.
Im sure there are many skilled 'Heavy' pilot on big birds but their are ton who think they are skilled and certainly dont do the hand flying that an RJ pilot does or have the ability of an RJ pilot.
As for the new generation of MPL/777 pilots with VNAV and autoland...god help us all.
So good to hear your appreciation for good old fashioned stick and rudder, visual approaches etc.