Article about lack of hand flying skills - FAA concerned
 

Now the public is also getting to know about this subject which has been worrying pilots:

AP IMPACT: Automation in the air dulls pilot skill - Yahoo! News

while automation makes its big steps, the loss of control becomes the major reason of accidents. That is a realy issue to everybody.

Overall the article was pretty good even though it avoided discussing any specific solutions.

It should be noted that the Buffalo accident cited in the article is only the latest of a string of fatal crashes involving scrutiny of how business gets done at regional feeder airlines. There will be more. I'm gratified to see "Sully" still considered worthy of being quoted. I think the man really wants to do some good for pilots.

Presumably the big aircraft manufacturers are unconcerned about pilots loss of manual flying skills otherwise they would issue bulletins recommending solutions. Until that happens, regulators and operators will not change the status quo. It's called complacency.

Concerned...
 

Just now? Uhhh!

I don't believe that it is complacency. This is a challenging issue that defies easy answers. Automation is effective at the tedious job of handling the aircraft through hours of flight, monitoring multiple functions far better than the human can. The pilot's role moves from manipulator of the flight controls to a decision maker, and manager of the automation. However, the human is valued in the system for being able to detect and respond to unusual situations, and to catch automation failures. If the human can no longer fulfill the basic functions of flying the aircraft, that is a large concern. But how do we prevent the loss. Require the pilot to hand fly a certain number of sectors every month? Does that actually increase risk during those sectors? Increase simulator time?

Many pilots, such as myself, who enjoy the actual stick and rudder stuff, take up recreational flying as an outlet, but it also keeps the skills up. I fly gliders. I notice that Captain Pearson of Gimli glider fame, and Capt Sullenberger, of Hudson river fame also kept their skills up with glider flying.

If you choose to use the auto-pilot all the time, I can gaurantee your skills will erode.
Any below average pilot can "fly" an auto-pilot and look passable as long as they do the minimum SOP's. Auto-pilots have their place, but if you don't choose to hand fly once in a while on a quiet sector, you are doing no one any favors. This ain't a hard job folks. hand fly your departures and arrivals when you can, push yourself just a little bit regularly, and its no big deal. If you never do it, you will have a tough time when you have to do it. Stop the whining, fly the plane! People spend more time screwing around with their mobiles than they do honing their skills that will benefit their carreers.

C'est la Vie...?
 

Automation seems an all encompassing life trend for humanity. I love and hate it, but I accept it as inevitable - it has transformed my own 25 year career in the tech industry. I now install/patch and hope-it-does-what-its-supposed-to like nobody's business - yay :8

Does it concern me that especially newer pointy enders are 'systems managers'? Sure, but again - it's the way forward so I won't waste time worrying about it. I just expect them to maintain the one thing humans must always maintain regardless of tech - common sense. Still serves me well.

One thing Boeing can do for me - next 737 please revise the gear or wing or something - my butt hurts :ouch:

The UK CAA is on this case too. According to their website.

Willit,

Too many operators take the decision out of the pilot's hands; either by formal SOPs outlawing handflying or by subtle disapproval of it. Of course, under-confident (read, under-able), commanders will not 'allow' their P2s to fly by hand. (Long ago, when an overworked management pilot, I flew far too little, perhaps once a month. My skills were eroded, but crucially, when I realised, I did more hand-flying, not less, and got back on top of things. I recovered my ability. I suspect many don't, or don't feel they can; I did, because I was 'management'!)

The 'choice' is more complex than you infer.

Years ago, aircraft crashed because pilots coudn't navigate them. The answer was EGPWS. Now, they crash because their pilots can't fly them.

What a tragedy that the opportunities presented of late for accident investigators to probe this have been dismissed through absence of competence or will (AF447 and its cousins, TK1951 and its cousins, etc).

And, the bean-counters are suffering too much fixating on "pleasing" the share-holders:=

Hand flying a difficult approach after a 14 hour day is, IMHO, more dangerous then using the automatics to take the strain, as the PNF/PM/whatever you call the radio monkey is working much much harder. The PF should be just as busy whether the automatics are in or not.
The real problem is that as an industry the "regulators" seem to want to be able to extend the maximum allowable working day under the premise that these aeroplanes "fly themselves", then because we're so knackered at the end of the day, use the automatics to help us out, just look at the new EASA proposals! Vicious circle ensues..
Fatigue has the same effects on the human body as alcohol, and I bet if someone dropped you in the flightdeck after 5 pints and told you to land safely, you'd use the autopilot! :ok:

I guess this will only get worse as RNP PBN approaches become more common. Hand flying the arrival and the approach is the most taxing on techincal ability and spatial awareness, and these approaches require the pilots to keep their mitts off.

+ most airlines disapprove of pilots taking the auto pilot out at altitude (cruise) for 2 reasons. 1) RVSM req auto pilot 2) they worry about a level bust.
Unfortunately if you feel you need the practise at height so you have a go. The snitch box flags it (QAR) expect a phone call.
Please note I'm talking about upper air skills.:hmm:

I find the whole subject of Automation vs Manual very interesting. I'm not a commercial pilot, only a mere (43 yr old) PPL trainee. However, I joined the pharmaceutical industry as a process operator in the mid '90's. We were trained to understand everything about the equipment we operated. Every valve and switch was operated manually and the working day was one of constant decision making and "qualified judgement". Generally speaking it took five years to properly train as an efficient/safe operator and I believe this fact entirely having been there. As time progressed automation became more and more built into the system and we were no longer to required to "make decisions". Processing was done by computers,not humans. Not only did the job become incredibly boring but our skills eroded to the point that when a potential safety critical event occurred we we were under pressure to deal with it due to lack of practice. In short I ( speaking for myself) believe I was converted from a skilled, finely tuned individual to a dormant button pusher in period of less than 10 yrs. I wouldn't dream of applying the same label to the fine men and women that fly us safely from A to B every day, indeed I don't know much ( if anything) about their workload. However, based on a different type of experience I firmly believe over-relying on automation reduces the human capacity to react appropriately when put under unexpected pressure.

The whole issue is a silly subterfuge. A two hour flight is 7200 seconds. At 80 seconds the industry already has automated 99% of the flight. The amount of design necessary to automate the last 1% is a baby step.

The airline manufactures don't give a **** about safety, pilots, or hand flying. What they care about is liability. Removing the pilot from the flight deck effectively removes the airline operator from the liability equation.

If you take a step back it's preposterous. There is this huge canopy of tens of thousands of commercial pilots, their training, the simulator manufactures...even an entire area of academic study (human factors management)...built upon the thin reed of 80 seconds of human activity. What a farce!

The airline manufacturers would kick the pilots to the curb in a heartbeat if they got some type of liability protection.

As a result of some of the earlier comments here, I would say that the autopilot systems only improve efficiency, not safety.

I believe hand flying a departure or an approach is no less safe than any auto system.

Also, I remember when the pilots managed their time so that the pilot flying the approach would have some suitable short time for some 'rest' prior to the descent/approach, to partially offset the effects of 'the 14 hour day'..
...and don't think for a minute that I haven't been there!

Cheers.....:)

A lot of you are missing the essential point; a few minutes of hand-flying a departure or arrival isn't going to solve this problem! The real issue is that young pilots of today have so little experience of handling aircraft at the edge of their performance envelopes that they have nothing to fall back on when things go wrong.

The emerging thought is that Upset Recovery Training during initial training and at regular refresher training afterwards - relevant to the aircraft that they operate - is now vital.

True. The problem must be solved right from the beginning: serious basic training. Too many FBOs (even big carrier academies) are not qualified and dilligent enough, spit out pilots too fast and they are sucked up by less than thorough small (or morally cheap) operators who very much like such cheap output selling their own grandmother just to go flying.

If we try to counteract once these pilots made their fast ascencion (through self paied ratings) to big airliners, it will be not only be a almost unsurmountable task concerning resources, but hit the resistance of the greedy and unscrupulous managers of today.

By the way, we warned of this erosion of skills some 20 years ago, just to be belittled, called cavemen and then duly ignored by the same fraction who now cry us down when we criticise the abscence of tactile feedback in modern aircraft.
We'll see each other again in a few years when another bunch of researchers, surveyors or other very intelligent and prevoyant men and women will have discovered these flaws! They will act just as surprised, sell their discoveries as absolutely revolutionary, take a lot of credit for that, the industry will resist as it does todays, citing costs. The protectionists of this kind of overautomation will first go into hiding only to emerge and pretend they always pointed out that danger, but the pilots, the only ones really capable and responsible of bringing up such problems as they operate the systems, did not speak up loud enough.

So once again they are to be blamed.....

If one is taught proper to fly, one needn't worry about "Single Channel Cognition". Comes natural, and that's the idea.

The hands are not the problem, gents, tis the cabeza, and innate skills, with experience.

No one can fly w/o cueing, whether visual or dial. And with sufficient cueing, it ain't even hard....

Let us stop confusing "poor stick" with lack of repetition. Then there will be no need to "Train" for stuff that is not happening.

Sully had "0" time in the sim or real in 320 water landings.

The only resource a pilot will always have and the autos will not, is "Innovation". And that does not atrophy.

As a retired airline check airman with sim instructor duties, I noticed a definite erosion of hand flying skills when a pilot came from a highly automated aircraft to an aircraft where automation was only an autopilot connected to a VOR or INS. It was very obvious that flying skills erode when one is over-dependent on automation.

I always required two, hand flown approaches, one with the FD off in the sim and one leg with the FD off during IOE. Those who regularly turned off the autopilot below FL180 were much better "sticks" than the children of the magenta line who regularly gave the leg to the automation. Simple facts...

Use it or lose it.

Desert 185

As someone who did my flying training with the RAF I may of course be biased, but I can tell you that the training aircraft I flew didn't have autopilots. All the flying was by hand in the Chipmunk, Bulldog. Jet Provost and Hawk and by then all those that didn't have the aptitude to hand fly well had been chopped.

Also, we all had to fly at the limits of the performance envelope, in terms of aerobatics and also at high level when close to mach and other limits.

When I did fly multi-engine (the Jetstream) on the IHT (Instrument Handling Test) for the award of a procedural IR the examiner "failed" the autopilot early in the test and all of it had to be hand-flown.

All that need to be done I think is for sim examiners to "fail" an autopilot from time to time so forcing pilots to fly manually more often. That would soon sort out those than can and those that can't hand fly an aeroplane.

What's actually needed is for 'hand flying' skills to be recognised as 'important'.

At the moment, they are not.

It's really as simple as that.

Agreed. However hand flying to 10,000 on a SID using raw data is a good start. Same with descent. No one ever suggested hand flying for ten hours.
Many years ago I was chided by the chief pilot of a German IT charter airline using 737's for daring to hand fly departures and arrivals. The reason he gave was the first officers were not trained to monitor hand flying by the captain - they were only trained to monitor the automatic pilot.

That was 20 years ago and nothing has changed. Blind reliance on the marvels of automation inevitably makes some pilots lazy and complacent.

It's deeper than merely 'polishing up' on manual control. Manual control carries with, especially with the Bus, an inference of OFF NORMAL a/c behaviour, relative to many conditions. Becoming complacent with too much autoflight is not the problem per se. Any rare event needs be addressed by a PILOT who is familiar, stop.

Training, yes, but in with familiarity are many Human attributes that get neglected in the rush to defend a particular format. First things first?

How about confidence? Spatial awareness, this having been seriously challenged in Simulator?

A Type rating as the be all and end all of a career is a dangerous thing. Awarding a type rating to one who is not fluent in Principles takes away the latitude an airman must have to respond intuitively to an emergent event. A human pilot who is without intuition borne of experience makes a (very) poor robot.

The last most egregious example of Airline HUA is the inability of a crew to transition from autopilot to Manual Control.

And that was NOT the result of a lack of "Training" Unusual attitudes.

Another point in this mix is with the shortage of experienced pilots becoming a bigger issue the manufacturers are selling the airlines "automation will save you". Take a look at the majority(not all) of accidents. Many are on the A320 series and B 737 series aircraft. The common thread: junior aircraft and first captain/f/o aircraft flown. The shortage is causing many airlines to push low experience pilots into these seats. The automation will save you about 98% of the time.

Observations from two other industries
 

Automation and the loss of human technical skills are wide spread throughout the industrial arena. The problems suffered in a cockpit are time sensitive and news worthy but those same problems occur in many industries. I’m not sure that any industry has a good answer for keeping humans in the loop and their skills up to date while the computers handle most normal operations and procedures.

I am very familiar with two non-aviation technical industries where the promise of using automation and then hiring less educated, lower skilled, cheaper technical staff has resulted in many problems similar to those discussed on this web site..

A prior message described the concerns of a process operator in a pharmaceutical facility. I have had the identical experience in very large, very dangerous, petroleum processing facilities.

When I started as one of many computer systems engineers responsible for computerizing the processes I spent years learning how the systems worked. I learned those details from highly skilled technicians who had helped build, startup, and operate the facility. They understood every little nuance of pressure, temperatures, flows, voltages, etc. They did not need my computer – but it sure made the day-to-day operation easier. They could monitor the computer and consistently take over and out-perform the computers when anomalous events occurred. Over the years our computer automation became more sophisticated, quicker and more accurate but I never once felt we could do without highly skilled and proficient operators.

That generation of technician/operator has retired and the new techs are just computer operators, screen watchers, and button pushers. They do not have the in-depth, intuitive knowledge of how the very complex parts of the processes interact. When process X mis-behaves, or monitor Y shows impossible data; they do not have the ability to quickly and easily determine what other processes and equipment will be affected and how they will react.

The first and 2nd generation operators were not allowed in the control room to work with the computers until they had spent years manually running the processes from the field. The current operators have not spent years and years climbing towers to turn valves, measuring depths, and monitoring temperatures. All they know is what the computer tells them and when it doesn’t tell them – they are confused. Usually, unlike a cockpit at 34,000’, there is time to figure it out or to call someone on the phone – but those skills will soon be unavailable.

Another example

My wife is the senior operator with 30+ years experience running a very large and complex municipal water system. She started as a field hand manually operating pumps, chlorinators, filters, test equipment, and valves. Over the years she pretty much learned how each and every connection and control interacted. When they automated EVERYTHING, after she had been there 12 years, she was very comfortable running the system from a control room with nine video screens and 60’ of wall space with gauges and displays. She still knew how it all worked – she had touched those parts and watched them operate. She knew in her gut what a change on a flow meter displayed on a computer would mean an hour later for the pressures at a standpipe 30 miles downstream. .

She has been responsible for training new operators. She uses a curriculum developed by engineers and educators who have never actually operated the equipment. She now has five techs working for her, none with any real hands on experience, and not a one of them can sit down and tell her what happens to the pressure at valve Z when the pump at location A fails. When the police call to say a 36” main is flooding the street; those new techs don’t instinctively know that a 70’ tall standpipe 5 miles away is draining thru that ruptured pipe.

And, the computer sure can’t tell them! Eventually the computer sees the standpipe reaching critically low level and displays an alarm but by then 5,000 people do not have enough water pressure to flush their toilets and it takes four hours to rebuild that pressure.

In both situations I described – management was able to hire less skilled technicians, spend less time training them, and pay them less money because they are easier to replace.

I guess things worked out OK because in neither case am I aware of any disaster caused by the lack of skill. But, I am well aware of a lot of lost product, poor product, and inefficient operation because the technicians did not have the experience to correct unusual situations for which the computer was not programmed as well as possible.

In both my experience in the refinery and her experience with the water system – the computer does a near perfect job 99%+ of the time. They are great for trending, remembering when to do something, displaying checklists, and bringing up procedures.

But – when a truly unusual event occurs that I as a systems engineer did not anticipate – then only a human with a lot of detailed knowledge, experience, and current proficiency can make the leap from specific knowledge to a new process or connection.

I’m not sure the commercial aviation industry should expect any other technical operations to help them understand automation and humans.

But, as a 40+ year computer professional, and SLF, I hope pilots can convince automation experts that skilled and CURRENTLY PROFICIENT pilots will always out perform computers in those truly rare situations that can not be anticipated.

Gents,

I thought this subject had already been thrashed to death on previous threads.

I will say again--Today, we operate in RVSM/RNP/RNav STARs and SIDs (even in China), all of which require maximum accuracy in flying which only automation can supply. Regrettably, manual flying in todays ATC environment is not only undesirable but is actively discouraged by enlightened management, and quite rightly so.

However, with regard to erosion of manual flying skills-undoubtedly this problem has to be addressed. I would suggest we start from basics. Not everyone can kick off flying fast jets where manual flying is the order of the day. But even that background offers no guarantees; (my oft quoted favourite--"The older I get, the better I was").

So for those following the civilian route, general aviation is the way to climb the ladder (rather than stepping straight into the cockpit of an A320). However, we all know the problems of "Parker Pen hours" and the lack of proper oversight when compared to military aviation (no disrespect intended).

But once in the airline environment, one should easily be able to weed out the incompetents, and I believe the system works well today in established companies. Unfortunately, this may not always be the case.

I would suggest that we start with modifying recurrent training in the sim. Let's cut down on lengthy LOFT exercises, programming MCDU's, (use the fixed based trainer), 10 minutes of low vis taxi, etc, etc. Not saying cancel altogether, just spend more time on important stuff such as manual flown raw data approaches in cross winds.

The simulator is the place to do this, not line flying with revenue pax on board in challenging ATC environments where all hands need to be on deck monitoring what is going on, not monitoring whether the flight path is being accurately flown, be it by young F/o or crusty old (fatigued) Captain.

"The older I get, the better I was....":cool:

1. Get rid of lawyers.

2. Get rid of insurance premiums.

Bingo..!

Thank you safety for so prominently confirming my points

Didn't I said so: it's always the pilots fault, isn't it? QED.

Please read carefully before you post. This mishap was created by the first mentioned effect: Irrational cost cutting, cheaper training, over reliance on automatics and their protections. Nobody here was connecting this with feedback, only you now. So combining the two is a self serving distortion (I mentioned that on another thread .....)

Well, with an IQ of 18 you would by now have realised that many professionals (I guess you do not belong to the airborne ones) do in fact think that there would have been a difference. Just who do you think is slightly better entitled to have an opinion? I do not pretend to be right, it's my opinion I throw in and always begin with "I think", but you definitely and exclusively pretend that feedback makes no difference. That's arrogant.

If you throw a stone into a herd of sheep, the one will yell that's hit. -> In my post I never singled out Airbus! I talked about modern aircraft. But you yourself sort of identified the one more prone to it .... Määääääähhhhh

Tacoma. Perhaps a bit arse about. "The decline of Technical skills"? Technical skills are improving, continually. Aviation wise. There is a concomitant degradation of Airmanship, is that what you meant? Airmanship is not technical, in spite of the engineers who insist it be seen that way. Arguably, Autoflight is not technical either.

The day Technology replaces what a Pilot can do has nothing whatever to do with land bound technical Industries. Hire cheap Help? Fine. Put them in the cockpit? Are you Mad?

Mechanization is nothing if not basic. Logic is a fancy way of saying prior calculation.

The challenge in Aviation is not mechanization, but devolving what is an ART into ones and twos. For my dough, it is impossible.

In a wildly chaotic airborne environment, one seeks to inject prior calculations into SURVIVAL? NO, and that is why the BUS gives up when the stink is fresh into the FAN. :ok:.

This whole deal is an illusion, at least in the way it is framed here.

Safety concerns. You might be misunderstanding the nature of 'feedback', in both technical and physiological dimension.

Tactility is CUE. CUE is survival, lack thereof is dangerous. Parsing as if a strictly environmental and parochial "bias" exists is not helpful. There is no such argument.

Both autoflight and Manual control are CUE DEPENDENT. Who is the caveman? Without sensing, Aviation doesn't exist.

So what is the FAA going to do about it other then be 'concerned'.

It took congress to bump new hires to 1500 hours...not the FAA.

Phantom Driver:

"The simulator is the place to do this, not line flying with revenue pax on board in challenging ATC environments where all hands need to be on deck monitoring what is going on".

I find this just such a fascinating comment. Why would the revenue passengers have any problem with you hand-flying in (what you call) a challenging ATC environment?

In any event, I always reckoned that those of us up the front were more important than them behind.

Are you admitting that hand-flying in (what you call) a challenging ATC environment is too much for you and your Capt/FO to deal with?

In addition, are you suggesting that your attempts at handflying would seriously upset the well-being of your passengers?

If so, I am extremely glad that I retired five years ago.

I was a TRI/TRE for many years. I did not like the ethos that came from JARS where almost all of the Base Check/IR was conducted with the automatics engaged. It quickly became obvious that "stick" values were on the decline.

I respectfully suggest to you that "stick" values might just be in the ascendancy again because too many people are dying under this so-called technological progress?

Now don't get me wrong; I have always welcomed technology where it made my job easier. I always taught that if the automatics are still working, then use them but we should NEVER EVER lose sight of the basics.

By the way, those of you who have exchanged views with me in the past will know that I am a fan of the DC-10. I first met the DC-10 with Laker and we had the "Deck Angle" indicator on the glare shield. It was great fun; we spent the whole flight from London to LAX pushing the button and worked for a deck angle of 3.0 to 3.5 degrees up for that was the optimum.

It was the same for the B747, L-1011, and the BAe 146.

And so it is that I find it quite fascinating that AF never found it necessary to teach such simple survival lessons to their aircrew on AF447.

Which takes me back to the beginning; I have mentioned this before on pprune but I once took a DC-10 to LAX with no autopilots (the MEL allowed this) and it was a relaxed affair and not one of the 345 passengers was sick).

Before you get carried away, I do realise that nowadays RVSM requires automatics...................

Which doesn't say much for modern poling abilities!

Apologies if I got the wrong end of the stick. I appreciate there are many out there who know the requirements for RVSM.

I have copied this from our MEL with regards autopilots. B is obviously the rectification interval, 3 is the number of autopilots installed on the 757, 0 is the number required for dispatch (sorry for those that knew that). It is a popular misconception that you must have autopilots engaged to be able to fly in RVSM airspace. One occasion when hand flying to the top of climb I was informed by the f/o, as we were passing FL280, that I should have the a/p in to remain RVSM compliant. I duly engaged it, then showed him the books at the top of climb.

I did laugh at the hate mail article yesterday about pampered pilots that can't fly. I am very fortunate to work for a company that actively encourages hand flying. Why on earth do we sign up for the job? It certainly wasn't because I enjoy pushing buttons and watching the automatics fly the aeroplane (let me point out that there is clearly a time and a place for everything). Admittedly, not every pilot will take the opportunity to hand fly, but the company runs manual handling sims to cater for them.


B 3 0 (M) Except for ETOPS operations, all may
be inoperative provided:
a) At least one FCC power circuit breaker
remains in,
b) All three FCC SERVO circuit breakers
are pulled and collared, and
c) Number of flight segments and segment
duration is acceptable to flight crew.
NOTE: Any mode that functions normally
may be used.

OPERATIONS NOTE
3 Autopilots must be operative for LAND 3 status.
2 Autopilots must be operative for LAND 2 status.
An Altitude Hold function is required for RVSM airspace.

Yes I think most of us actually understand that in RVSM it is the altitude hold function that is the requirement.

I agree with many of the experienced instructors comments, but there are a few that I disagree with.

1. Hand flying to 10K does nothing IMHO, I have crew members doing this all the time, it's funny, they simply do not engage the A/P and follow the FD's up to 10K and think they've accomplished something, when in fact I could go in the back and get any 10 year old kid on board to do the same thing, holding the aircraft symbol on the big cross takes no talent.

2. Yes I do believe that hand flying can overload a crew in some of the busier terminal areas, much different than when I was flying full procedures from an IAF, it's simply too busy in many areas with very complicated STAR's.

3. Now we then move to sim world where the A/P is - often U/S with the multiple emergency scenarios.

4. Now many of my colleagues have less than 300 hours flying a real airplane, then they go straight into the computer, so how can you lose flying skills they never learned in the first place?

Hi mate, good post. In addition to your 4 points.

1) Turn off the FD on the STAR!!! Simples. Then the pilot at least learns to scan. FD/SPEED/FD/SPEED is not a scan you are correct 10 yr olds can do it. Do a few STARS and learn the real scan, then fly some approaches.Still plenty of RNAV sids around

2) Knowing when to fly raw data is the most important thing about doing it, not how good you are. High workload, difficult or busy departure, bad weather. Do not do it. Plenty of good opportunities to practice at quiter times or low work load approaches. Request a visual and fly.

3) So many pilots/button pushers kid themselves that they can fly because they do it for 15 minutes twice a year in the simulator. Again typically with FDs.

4) If you are not one of the rookie 3,000 hour Cpts who do not know how to fly either teach the FO. Obviously again comes back to point two, knowing WHEN to fly!That comes down to airmanship and common sense, two things that the industry is also losing, mainly down to the reason people stopped flying....treating the OPS manual as the bible and making poor decisions as a result of not factoring in the individual circumstances around events.No SOP for every scenario.

True enough, however one is not required to use it, it is just recommended. One is still allowed to hand fly in RVSM if one is confident enough in his skills to do it within RVSM limits. Of course it becomes kinda boring after some time and that is where an autopilot has its use. But there is nothing preventing us to fly a SID or STAR to/from cruise level manually without a FD. Yes. even if it is PRNAV, it is not really all that difficult.

Are we forgetting something?
 

Have we already forgotten the great decision making of :

The crew of the BA 747 at JNB
The crew of the BA 777 at LHR
The crew of the A 320 in the Hudson river ditching.
The crew of the A 380 in SIN
And probably many others we don't know about.

I never hand flew above Fl 300 apart from trimming the acft.

What about the Canarsie approach at JFK with x-wind or getting a 747 in at SMX at night and many other difficult airports .

Let's not overreact like the media and authorities. Enjoy the flying auto or manual and if I could choose a new profession I would be pilot again.

Denti

Please explain how you can do that without FD's!! What exactly are you tracking?

First of all you still have the navigation performance scales displayed in your PFD of course which show very precisely where you are in your RNAV corridor. Secondly you should be able to check your ND every now and then which shows you how far of course you are in 0.01NM steps (and yes, you should be able to fly that exact manually). And of course you still have the dreaded magenta line. FD off does not mean you have no other data available which can be used to fly.