Could not agree more. There is a real lack of old fashioned skills these days. A few years ago, we lost our FMC in mid flight, the inexperienced FO wanted to ask for vectors, I simply switched to VOR and followed it as you do....ATC were a bit supprised as well. Sadly we are now all magenta line followers

People who are attracted to flying are natural thrill seekers. The true skill in flying is to make even the most challenging situation routine and seemingly boring. And therein lies the problem.

Well put Layload.
The skills I learnt flying light twins around Southern Africa for ten years WITHOUT a wx radar or GPS have been carried through and still used to this day ( now over 17 yrs on the 777). One such skill - to the horror of some - is to look out the window!

Agree.
I actually feel at home here; I can remember checking my drift through the drift sight on the DC3.

Impressive SKA B727 you tube
 

First thing that struck me was the clean pressed shirts that they all were wearing. Some of our modern lot look as though theyve slept in theirs.
Approach he was working in the trim with his thumb..nice..proper flare rather than plonking it on and then doing his own reverse.
Did a short wet lease with Air Afrique...nothing like VNE by 3,000ft.

Someone above mentioned the use of a HUD... I would just point out that that piece of electronic crap bears a lot of responsibility for the crash of FZ981 (read the report) and, personally, I'm no fan of the HUD... on a CAVOK day a look out of the window coupled with some good old-fashioned stick & rudder skills is just as good (if not better) than anything the HUD can provide.... e,g, if you follow the HUD ever so accurately the blasted thing will have you landing at or beyond the end of the touchdown zone... whereas I want to land on the numbers and can do it every time (without recourse to any HUD nonsense) simply by looking out of the window coupled with +6,000 jet landings in the experience bag... but I guess the button pushing land-o-matic generation need all the electronic help they can get?!

And the winner is.... The Frys 747SP. Miramar a few years ago. Watch the final pass.


At least for transport category. TAP is a very close second. If not tied for first.

Will the QF Sunrise aircraft have laundry facilities on board?

Did you have to learn the fine skill of DME Homing in SA?

A bit of willy waving has seemingly crept into this thread now. The stick & rudder brigade are out to chastise the children of the magenta. The fact of the matter is, if you really want to fly an orbit at 100’ in a jet transport nowadays then you’re confined to clapped out freight luggers in salubrious places like Somalia. It’s undoubtably a fine display of hand flying in a day and age where the art appears lost. Anyway, I’m quite confident that I could pole about in my 70t+ crate however I don’t consider my ability to do so as a extension of my man hood. Pilots and their universal ability to talk about how wonderful they are appears alive and well in abundance

Herod nailed it, in one brilliant, original word, in post #139.

https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/627747-cargo-jet-makes-360-100-a.html#post10634393

The accident to FZ981 did not occur in CAVOK.

The poor souls flying FZ981 may not have made good use of the HUD, or may have been let down by its implementation but bringing that into this conversation seems inappropriate to me

Was that AC/DC music you can hear on the video actually in the cockpit or it's just on the video?
I think it fits great there.

AC/DC is a great fit for the activities being carried out here but it's definitely added "in the edit" as supposed to on the flight deck.

Folks who fall over themselves to try and demonstrate their superiority, endlessly pestering to hand fly departures in TMAs or to do raw data ILSs, or getting a hard-on about some guy doing a 360 without crashing into the terrain! - 'meh' - but when they're faced with one of the few actual tests of real stick and rudder skills in our job - a gusty crosswind landing, or even an accurate landing at the right spot at the right speed - and their flying usually gets real ragged, verging on alarming - that don't impress me so much! Landing skills do seem to be in a worrying negative tend.

MC
So what does impress you much?
To get the landing in the right spot at the right speed in gusty crosswind conditions is easy as .....pie.
Auto land.!
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....894828dabd.jpg

Up tp a point ... autoland confused by ILS interference
Incident: Singapore B773 at Munich on Nov 3rd 2011, runway excursion

We could open a separate thread on autolands, especially those done on CAVOK or CAT1 ( like the SIA above) where the ILS signal is not protected . I understand some airlines having ordered the Max were considering making autoland mandatory on that type regardless of Wx conditions to save on engines and tyres..Maybe now their confidence in Boeing electronics driving the flight controls might have eroded somewhat those plans.

Back to flying an airliner at 100ft, , since w are sharing old stories, I went to Narssasuaq a few times in the early 90s where the easiest route from Europe was Icelandair which used a good old 727-100 to do that , as if I remember correctly (waiting to be corrected) that type could take up to 35 Kts tail wind. which was a bonus since there is a glacier at the end of the fjord making mandatory landings and take off in opposite directions.
On clear Summer days one of the thrills of that flight was getting down to 500ft above the ice , looking for the glacier entrance and go down to 100-200 ft in the valley for about 20 NM, overfly the runway, teardrop over the fjord and land on the numbers. The pax loved it and complained when it could not be done . The only drawback was hearing the constant bells and other Woops woops in the cabin , since the cockpit door was wide open in those days .

I really enjoyed this thread - Another impressive piece of flying was the (Lady Capt?) who landed her Thomson 757 in 40kts+ crosswinds in a huge storm last year at the aircraft carrier type strip at Bristol UK.