Autopilot and SOP

[loulou]

Hi,
I heard that some airlines have SOPs where it's prohibited to fly the plane manually (have to engage a/p just after tkf and disconnet a/p at the minimums)
If the weather is allright, Runway insight, crew fully rested and workload reduced, we should be able to make a manual approach.
practising some raw data ILS quite often allow us to maintain our skills at a good level, flying a plane trough the autopilot buttons will diminish our flying skill level, and at long term we will loose our self confidence and be more stressed if the a/p is u/s or if we have to perform a visual or circing app.
It's not with a simulator twice a year that you can recover your manual flying skill if you never practise on the line.
and it must be very frustrating to just press a/p buttons when it's also very safe to simply fly the plane (if we still know how to fly manually a plane:eek: )
So why some airlines are writing such SOPs wich will only reduce our skills levels??

[wileydog3]

loulou

At my old house, autoflight was not mandatory but it was recommended. Of course, with Cat II and IIIA/B approaches, it was autoflight for autoland. We did not have HUDs.

Autopilots can be a useful 3rd pilot in emergencies/abnormals (read 'non-normal' in more recent manuals) with the Capt running the checklists, the F/O programming and monitoring "George" and "George" doing the flying.

At times when workload goes up, IF the crew fully understands the autoflight system, you can let 'George' do the flying while the crew does the thinking.

As one HuFacts guy noted, "good combination of the dry computer and the wet computer (brain)."

The problem is sometimes the crews do not fully understand the autoflight system and that is a reflection on 1) training or 2) the autoflight mode design or 3) the crew.