Originally Posted by
jack schidt
Outlaw, sadly the changes that the future eventually holds will be removing the inevitable weak link that sits in the cockpit. The more mistakes that pilots make, the more the engineers and airlines are keen to remove us as a hole in the cheese.
Aviation to me appears to be regressing in safety as some pilots are tending to become increasingly more and more relaxed in their duties. I know I am going to watch for the inbound flak, but I am sorry to say that the standards of a lot of people I fly with these days is nothing too often that I am particularly proud to watch and applause.
J
I can't say I disagree as a whole. 30+ years in the business has shown me a few things along the way.
Some pilots have a firm grasp on the non-esseentials, can recite the SOP at nauseam but can't calculate a descent in their heads or do basic math with regard to ZFW changes etc. It's become a "Book" industry as lawyers and managers alike want it all in a book so they can hang you with it when a mistake is made.
In my generation, newcomers went through a long period of "seasoning" before they could even consider a left seat, it was a result of the long times to command. Sitting beside some of these grumpy old bastards at the time was a pain in the backside but they taught us a lot of the good stuff that you just can't get from a book.
Its been my observation during the past 20 years that the casualties of the modern cockpit is airmanship, cockpit discipline, over reliance on automation and general experience.
There was a time when aircraft flew VOR radials out of and into airports, altimeters where less accurate, there was no TCAS and no websites with live ATC for everyone to listen to. This case might not have ever made it to any manager in the past but as was posted earlier, we operate in a glass bubble today. For all we know PPRUNE might have been management's first indication that this event happened!
However, they share in some of the blame in the decline as well. Higher monthly hours mean controlled rest in the flight deck which removes redundancy when operating with one pilot. The lack of a pilot union is another reduction in safety as there is no channeled input from the pilot group to share information in a unbiased manner.