PPRuNe Forums - Perish the thought..

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Perish the thought..

The pilots I fly with have never spun a jet and don't look out the window.
I will fly if I want to.

Quote:

My interest stems from my 11 years of experience as an airline pilot, having been both a captain and first officer,” said study author Stuart D. H. Beveridge of the University of New South Wales.

First Officer and Captain of what? All the examples cited of where the Captain stands back and takes a strategic view involve operations that have more than 2 people. In addition the work space is much bigger than a cockpit. If the manufacturers want to build airliners with a flight deck the size of the USS Enterprise or the Pacific Princess then I am all for it.

Quote:

Some of the reasons airlines keep first officers away from flying don’t make much sense, he added.“One of the more common criticisms of the captain delegating the flying I have heard have been: ‘In our airline we have really inexperienced first officers, we can’t be giving them the controls.’ This just raises two more concerning questions: why do we have a pilot in the flight deck that by admission is not able to do the most basic function of the job which is flight path management?” Beveridge said.

My bolding but once again what airline did the author of the report work for. Has he not heard of the cadet system where 250 hour pilots are operating in the right hand seat? In an emergency the inexperienced F/O does not have the spare capacity to do the flying and respond to the checklist item. So now the Captain has to deal with the emergency and monitor the F/O. It also depends on the individual F/O and Captain. When I was an F/O I remember one exercise where I was the PF in a complex exercise and managing upwards and on other occasions I have been more than happy as a Captain to make the F/O the P/F while I manage the situation before the approach is commenced. The teamwork required in a two crew operation is a lot more dynamic than the HF and psych experts realise. The Captain is the one with the experience (as a generalization) and authority to decide how a situation will be handled.

I stopped reading & lost interest in the report, @ the mention of . . . . " Capt Kirk and the Starship Enterprise"!!!

The problem with adopting a shipping style of command is how quickly the situation can unravel in a plane vs a boat.
You can easily lose control of an aircraft in about 5 seconds whereas a boat I imagine would be more forgiving. Given that certain failures on numerous aircraft types make the pilot's job harder rather than easier handing control over to the FO could result in task saturation and a loss of SA and the possibly the aircraft.

Folks,
I have lost count of the dead trees used to publish "authoritative academic" studies on airline crew, I don't think any possible permutation has been missed. This one is more "high school project" standard, from what I have read.

Many years British European Airways, BEA (of non-landing handling pilot versus the landing non-handling pilot, not forgetting the non-landing non-handling pilot,fame) actually trialed the Captain sitting on the jump seat, with two F/Os having the window seats, it didn't last long, and was a schermozzle. As well as frightening Captains rigid.

As far as I am concerned, some of the best studies of how to organise a crew and sensible SOPs has come from Boeing funded studies, and it is fascinating to actually sit down with Boeing psychologists and other subject experts, and you can see the results in the changes/developments of Boeing flightdecks over the years and models.

Tootle pip!!

PS: BEA + BOAC = BA.

God help us if the industry starts taking advice from those three!