Gee, give us a break guys. Hog Driver, Ascend Charlie, Blender Pilot - I get what you're trying to say, but the way you say it.......
Blender, you say
They have been flying by pushing buttons to go up, down or where ever, the little hand flying they have done has been in a easy to fly, stable acft
well I'm sorry, but this is just such a broad generalisation. Have you flown a high performance transport jet? I admit what you say might be true for an inexperienced, low time new first officer.
But come on, don't you think we fly in some goddam awful weather, have system failures, engine failures etc, exercise all sorts of decision making while travelling at 8 miles a minute and manage to keep it all going sector after sector day after day all over the world.
Your gross simplification of airline flying is factually incorrect and insulting. And no, I don't have an over-inflated view of my own abilities. I just don't like my job being portrayed as it would be by laymen in the press who don't know any better. You should.
I can assure you that when you're in charge of a seventy tonne transport jet with two hundred people down the back, line training a new first officer, middle of winter, dark night, snow covered runway reported as slippery, gusty crosswind on limits, fuel rapidly approaching diversion minimums, all your diversion fields rapidly going out and faced with an offset VOR approach down to minimums, your
decision making criteria is extremely exercised, and I can also assure you the aircraft is anything but stable!!
And what I've described isn't that unusual a situation, it's just one of those nights out on the line.
I agree that fixed wing guys who haven't flown helicopters often have a strange view of them, and don't realise they are unstable and require constant control inputs. I agree that some (not all) helicopter ops require a "bush flying" mindset where you are totally aware of terrain, wind direction etc, and no one's going to warn you of an imminent f*** up.
But that doesn't mean that airline flying is the cliche that Blender describes it as. That's just plain stupid.