Keeping your manual flying skills up by regularly using them is the easiest way. If you need to do it in a non-normal situation and haven't done it in the last few years it's a bit late to start training it. Of course flying manually to 15000 and back down is not very challenging for those that do it, it is however very challenging to those that don't. Especially in IMC. And it trains basic skills which one might need in a bad situation and frees mental capacity to deal with other stuff.

Legally you can get away without any real manual flying in the simulator event every 6 months. It is legal (at least in europe) to do the OEI pattern on autopilot, the required non precision approach on autopilot and so on. Passing SIM checks doesn't mean anything as the legal requirements are way out of date. SIM checks are there to tick boxes, not to check skills. Which is one of the major problems right now and has ultimately lead to the current mess.

The regulatory agencies will not take care of this problem for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that many of the inspectors could not now, if ever, hand fly a jet around the pattern, acquire a visual picture, and land in a crosswind with a 50% power failure.

Additionally, many agencies are pretty cozy with their national carriers and will hardly stand up to them on the issue of non-flying FOs. This is a big and endemic problem for some pretty big and successful airlines.

To make matters worse, the traditional sources of hands-on, already trained pilots, military or otherwise, are drying up at the same time as the working conditions of the jobs sour. It is expensive to learn how to fly these days - even as far as getting a private license to see if you like it, and keeping a light airplane at your local field is hardly within the reach of most folks.

Frankly, I don't know how to correct the problem - I am well out of it. I think the best chance for a functional cure is for the insurance agencies to get involved. The flight offices are drinking the Kool-Aide so don't look to them. The BODs are clueless. The public makes their choice of airline by price and how the cabin crews groom themselves.

I don't like standing in line for 30 minutes to use one of the two latrines the airline thoughtfully provides 140 passengers. Nor do I like having to wipe off the seating area before I sit down or eat. I doubt if anyone else does either. But, right now it seems to be the choice with a few notable exceptions. Not my place to advertise I suppose but LH is a hint for one.

Denti
 

:ok:

Good point IMHO.

Over the years the training time seems to have been swallowed up by the requirement to teach/check another automatically "flown" item which has been added to the list... CAT III approaches needless to say but now we have PRNAV approaches in various forms, then of course there's the assessable LOFT exercise .... etc, etc.

With luck, with a time efficient trainer on a good day you might get time to fly a couple of circuits at the end of the detail.

Ridiculous
 

I can't imagine that the contributors above have flown a sim in the last few years. Talk about queues for toilets give their pathetic game away.
In my airline, manual handling sim details are standard for all pilots, over and above LPC/OPC and LOE's. As are large chunks of practice hand-flying in IMC under such conditions as dual hydraulic failures, emergency elec config, dual fmgc failure, etc.
Hand flying with 2 engines working properly is easy, and performing this on the line in busy airspace such as JFK, MIA, and the like is just stupid; it reduces the level of monitoring required by both operating pilots.
As for cruise pilots, (not non-handling FO's), these folk get far more frequent sim checks.
What is the beef of these SLF people on this thread? They are clueless, in any event, as is usually the case. They seem to love to pretend to be commercial pilots. Sad people.

Bit harsh Mr Bloggs, especially as I suspect many of the above have plenty of simulator time over the years and have seen the emphasis shift from manual flying to automatics over the years.....:hmm:

FWIW are you saying your company rosters you for extra simulator time above and beyond that required by your regulator or are the handling details you refer to thrown in as part of the recurrent exercises?

find it easier to carry out an ILS approach in IMC, crosswind, one engine out with no FD nor A/THR in the sim than an ILS with zero automation in a slightly turbulent and gusty day with a fully operational airplane in the real airlplane.

Simulators can't simulate atmosphere nor its effects on the airplane that well. In most of the cases all you have to do is establish early on LOC and G/S and then continue down while smoking a cigar. Even in dual hydraulic, with A/THR and FDs it is easier...

In real atmosphere the LOC is not so easy to keep till 'minimum', even with all the good information coming from the PFD, with its expanded scale and the green diamond and all. Even if very light, real turbulence in IMC cheats my body making me feel the inclined other way, treacherously inducing me to steer the airplane away from loc and glide. If my scan rate is slow due to lack of practice then I have to regain the glidepath too often. Specially with A/THR OFF. If my scan rate is good I can handle it, but this requires practice.

And practice, make no mistake, requires authorization. At leas nowdadays.

Landings are always worse in the sim, though, because the feeling is definitely wrong, no matter what they say.

Sims are easy, or maybe I am specially gifted for them...

ammending Annex 6 would change the trend. Airlines would be free of liability and they would stop discouraging hand flying.

I also think that they should increase the minimum sim training, because its not sufficient for all the additional stuff we have to do.

Mr. Bloggs is quite correct to criticize my post. What I was attempting to say, and clearly failed at, was that while I do not enjoy flying in aircraft that have neglected the creature comforts in the cabin, I would still prefer that to having 1 or even 2 pilots in the cockpit who are pretty marginal in the areas we are discussing.

My other unclear point was that most passengers are not aware of this problem and blissfully choose the airline on price or the ambiance of the cabin.

There are a very few airlines out there who still seem to keep a balance. Not many, but there are some. And interestingly, when you meet their crews on layovers they seem like they are having fun.

For the record, Mr. Bloggs, I am typed in a bunch of large airplanes from 4 manufacturers, I am still flying, was in management for a few years, have consulted with various agencies investigating accidents, and I have more then enough flight time. Thank you for your comments.

Explanation
 

Comprendo, Plectron. Thanks for clarification. Apologies. And yes wiggy, as I clearly wrote, my company rosters additional sim sessions for every pilot to practice manual handling. I have had 2 in the last 36 months, and hand-fly regularly anyway. An RA last week in the USA gave me a spot of extra practice. As did some turbulence at 400, where the autothrust is best disconnected for the duration of the bumps in the road, big ones anyway.

As for the sim being easier than the real thing, I've never heard this before. Sims are usually twitchy in my experience; even when simulating electric aircraft.

Roy ? Mr Bloggs
 

Thanks for the clarification.

There can't be many airlines at the moment who are prepared to roster pilots (and also pay for simulator time) for anything details beyond that required by the regulatory authority...... mindyou I'm sure most of us here have also had our share of RAs and hand flying.....

Differnent types of sims for different purposes
 

They should introduce a new kind of simulators, smaller, cheaper and easier to maintain, where pilots could train manual flight in their type.

These sims would have room only for the two pilots (trainee and instructor/PM, or two trainees) would disregard or just mockup most of the systems except those needed for manual flight in different conditions and have limited motion (three axis with not much inclination). you would get inside them without the need of a bridge. they would be small like a car. Visual would be not important, just a cheap screen for the final landing, or even nothing.

We would use this sims without having to leave the homebase, because you don't need a sim centre for that. Crews would have to make a reasonable amount of time periodically.

Some of them could be enhanced so that upsets could be trained in them. these would be bigger and would be better placed in sim centers.

And every six months we would do the usual full flight simulator, with LOFT, CRM, LVO, etc... and upset training (one hour per pilot is enough) once a year

I think that would be a good solution for this dilemma

Maybe, maybe not, but playing devil's advocate for a moment with airlines nowadays increasingly trying to work their crews as close as possible to duty limits on a daily/monthly/annual basis when do forsee these devices being used?

Another less expensive and time consuming way to maintain, or attain, hand flying skills is hand fly the airplane part of the time. I know this is unheard of in this generation because the autopilot can never be shut off without a really good reason per some opspecs.

I think most of us here do that when we can, but as has been previously mentioned simply flying the hand flying in the aircraft up or down from FL200 is better than nothing but still doesn't really stop erosion of handflying skills if you only do this 4-5 times a month (Long Haul). Like microburst I feel there's a need for more sim time ( with my ex-QFI hat I'm thinking of classic GH stuff such as, stalls, scannexs, circuits, ( oh did I mention aeros :E - )), but to be of genuine benefit it's almost certainly got to be in a full sim, it's going to need to be an exercise done at least every couple of months to be of benefit ( just a guess, other offers accepted). However the costs to the company in terms of sim time, instructor time and costs for taking a crew off line will make Fleet managers and the company accountants turn white so this has to be an issue one for the regulators to rule on, not something that should just be left for pilots to try and remedy in their spare time ..........

For me, this issue isn't just an armchair exercise or chit-chat on the computer. I care about this issue because I have seen it and it alarms me.

I will say it one more time and then leave this to all of you to hash over. From my perspective, it isn't so much erosion of skills, rather, it is that the skills were never there in the first place. I saw pilots chosen for reasons other than aviation aptitude, placed in an intensive C172 program (and incidentally, subjected to some old school hazing), allowed to languish (often for considerable time) waiting for their slot to open, scheduled into an intensive ground school and sim program, and finally released onto the line in a right seat wide body long haul op. The opportunity on these flights to learn any real handling was non-existent. Company Manual dictated no cross wind landings and in reality they couldn't handle any, especially one that would shift during the flare. They got around all that by using the autoland feature. NO ONE did any visual approaches, hand flown or otherwise. Non-precision approaches were an emergency procedure.

The sims were every three months to the airlines credit. The FOs spent extra time, on their own, memorizing the PFD pictures for each scenario - sharing their information on a very sophisticated web site. I suppose it helped but it didn't solve the problem - they really couldn't fly very well and in their career path probably wouldn't get better.

The real solution is to put these kids in a commuter type program or even a high frequency short haul jet program and use the big jet as an upgrade. Or, dare I say, dual qualify people. (Okay, I hear the knives coming out over this...) Wash out the ones that can't hack it. This was a very real option at this particular carrier but they chose not to do it. Why? Who knows.

Sim handling sessions work okay for guys that knew how to fly once in their distant past but doesn't really do that much for clever lads that just want the expensive watch and layover entertainment.

I can second that, but our background seems to be different. I do fly shorthaul with up to 5 sectors a day and therefore quite a few landings. However even there you can see skill erosion taking place with those too lazy to handfly or too fascinated with all the new automatic stuff. But even our longhaul operation is not exclusively longhaul, it is mixed fleet flying and before you can get trained on the big bird you need quite some shorthaul experience (sadly that is airbus only until the 787 arrives).

Our biggest competitor trains his students through an MPL program, same as we do. And every student entering the company will have to fly shorthaul for at least somewhere betwee 4 and 6 years before going on the longhaul fleets. Both companies by the way still encourage manual raw data flight which is nice, but sadly not enough for some.

We would love to create a career program in our company by taking the Dash operation back into our company (currently it is done by a subsidiary with its own pilot corps) and letting everyone start there, both on the right and the left side to gain experience, however that is one of those battles nearly impossible to win since it would increase the cost for Dash pilots considerably.

Agree. But for various reasons there are a breed of pilots who find monitoring the automatics, rather than practicing manual flying, is money for old rope. In otherwise they simply cannot be bothered to fly manually in IMC even though conditions might be entirely appropriate for the practice. Other pilots might be perfectly happy to switch off the automatics and pole their aircraft but are prevented by the captain who becomes immediately apprehensive if the FD is switched off. That situation will not change. So much depends on the individual personality and dare I say his love or otherwise of flying.

Yep. It's a personal and personnel issue. If the pilots really wanted to maintain their professionalism on that level, they (and the unions, instead of protecting the weak) would figure out a way to do it. Unfortunately, in many companies the back-biting weasels in the group are dropping a dime on the folks who go against the dumbing-down company policy of allowing the automation to fly the airplane without regard for personal proficiency. Like many other professions and life's pursuits, we are often our own worst enemies.

Frankly, I'm thrilled to be retired from the airlines :ugh: and working for an outfit (run by pilots who understand) who values technology and human capability as equally important tools. :D Refreshing...

Are you hiring? :)

Yeah...I know how you feel. This is one those rare instances these days where the Chief Pilot actually hires the pilots and then tells HR to process the paperwork. On course, on glidepath. :ok:

Coming soon - lack of hand driving skills ...
Look, no hands! Driverless car hits the streets