Training & Autopilot, Flight Director, other Gadgets
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: EuroGA.org
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On a slightly amusing note, I have just stumbled upon a nice collection of avionics manuals (to add to my already huge collection of avionics operating/installation manuals) and noted that the G1000 Perspective Pilot's Guide is a mere 550 pages 
Join Date: Sep 2010
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We all know that using the automatics is, most of the time, less hassle than hand flying.
However, the pilot who can't, won't or is incapable of hand flying the hardest of approaches in the ****tiest of weather into the most demanding airfield has no right to be in the flight deck of an aeroplane.
You can train someone in the use of automatics all you like but when 'George' goes LBU then you must be capable of doing everything 'George' can. That requires regular, demanding practice and there's only one place you can do that and it aint in the sim. This might increase your work load and that of the PNF, but so effing what?!
However, the pilot who can't, won't or is incapable of hand flying the hardest of approaches in the ****tiest of weather into the most demanding airfield has no right to be in the flight deck of an aeroplane.
You can train someone in the use of automatics all you like but when 'George' goes LBU then you must be capable of doing everything 'George' can. That requires regular, demanding practice and there's only one place you can do that and it aint in the sim. This might increase your work load and that of the PNF, but so effing what?!
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Automation can be a great thing, but it can also be a curse.
Same almost identical scenario with the Kenya Airways B737-800 in May 2007 in Douala. One minute and forty two seconds from lift off to total oblivion into a swamp IMC at night still trying to engage the omnipotent autpilot. The captains last words into the CVR at 14 seconds before impact at 287 knots pitch 48 degrees nose down and 60 degrees right bank angle, were ""We are crashing". And the first officer agrees saying "right, yeah we are crashing right".
Again, clearly the captain's hand flying skills weren't too good, either. And those are only two of many accidents caused by incompetent pilots who should never have been at the controls in the first place.
The time is well overdue for those who extol the flight safety virtues of blind reliance on full use of automation, to wake up to the fact that manual flying of most jet transports is a skill that is absolutely vital - and practice makes perfect. Unfortunately, many airline pilots become so automatics dependant (see the opening paragraphs) that they become frightened of making a fool of themselves and deliberately avoid manual flight like the plague. Thus they cling to the comforting crutch of automatics in mortal fear of exposing their incompetence as airmen. And people die because of this irrational fear of hands on flying skills.
As the highlighted quote said: "Automation can be a great thing, but it can also be a curse"
That requires regular, demanding practice and there's only one place you can do that and it aint in the sim.
Of course there are commonsense limits to "practicing" this stuff in the real aeroplane but if the pilot cannot handle this sort of instrument flying in a modern simulator then he would be foolhardy to try his luck in the real thing.
The real problem is that many operators do not consider manipulative skills are essential to the operation of modern airliners and thus fail to schedule the time in the simulator for a really good crack at the sequences on instruments mentioned above. Mostly it is button pressing and watch the autopilot do it's stuff.
Pilots will never retain whatever manual raw data flying skills they may have once had, unless adequate time is allotted in the simulator. And that doesn't mean one hand flown raw data ILS for 10 minutes every three months.
