Here we go again with the old debate about 'hand-flying' skills vs. being able to speed-type commands into the FMS and never, ever needing to hand-fly since that must mean that someone made a boo-boo.

One that was a particular wake-up call was the so-called Roselawn accident in the States, when a load of ice accumulated while the aircraft was on autopilot in a holding pattern. When the autopilot released, having reached its force limit, 'twang!' went the ailerons and the airplane augered in. It turned out that the crew would have had to put in fairly massive amounts of roll force to get the wings level, when they assumed the ailerons were locked. It was after that one that recommendations about not using the autopilot in icing came out.

What I am getting at here is an obvious tendency to sit there and watch 'What's it doing now?' rather than jump in with a timely hand-flown intervention. There are arguments for and against this, of course, but the trend seems to be to sit and watch for perhaps too long. I have often had points deducted on simulator checks for perfectly correct control inputs simply because these were hand-flown.

I went on a European trip last weekend in a series of bizjets, with the last leg in a new Falcon 2000 EASI. It seemed that the (admittedly wonderful) cockpit technology took away a lot of attention from looking outside to see what was happening in the real world. Virtual reality ruled, there. Of course I am used to Africa, so that I am keeping an open mind about how it's done in Europe these days, when I have a lot to learn.

Heard a rumour about this from a mate: indeed probably Ryanair in CIA! :\

An interesting thread; I'm going to add a comment which I'm surprised nobody has already made:

AIRBUS!

A Fly by Wire Airbus could not have rolled to 87 deg (with the flight control computers functioning normally - lets not get into multiple failures just yet) nor would it require massive stick forces to combat any unusual icing or flap/slat configuration!

I agree with chuks; there is a tendency to sit typing stuff into the FMGS and wondering "what's it doing now?" but this is easily overcome by the company expounding a philosiphy of "I don't know what it's doing now so - autopilot off, flight directors off, fly the aeroplane"

If you fly for a company whose management can't see the value of this mindset either move or get promoted to management and change it!

Don't want to get into the usual Airbus vs Boeing argument here but I thought it worth pointing out that the incident which gave rise to this thread in the first place could not have happened in a digital FBW aeroplane with flight envelope protections written into the software - it's the future, no question about it!

Happy landings

3 Point

Yeah, FBW is the future.
We're becoming "button-pushers" .



***OMG the autopilot disconnected, we're all gonna die*** :}

have heard this one recently.
don't know how true it is but was told that it was B.A. or thomson.