Auto pilot use
 

Do any airlines/regulatory authorities have rules mandating auto pilot use and limiting hand flying. The question has arisen out of an event of the PF hand flying and not having time to monitor systems, which had a failure, really two failures, as the system failed as well as the warning that the system had failed. PNF was not sharp. Teh thought is that the auto pilot very rarely fails, the second autopilot fails even more rarely, and maintaining and developing hand flying skills should be done in the sim and not with 100 - 400+ pax down the back.

From my experience, talking about the B737 and upwards and similar types, the teaching has always been that if a problem occurs then select the auto-pilot 'in' so that you can sit back and properly assess the problem(s) and make the correct decisions.
Very few people can do two things at once so the idea that if things go wrong you should hand fly is not, in my opinion, a good one, unless the nature of the failure prevents the use of autopilots.
Possible exceptions would be an engine failure at or just after V1, then I would expect the PF to hand fly until the clean up was complete but even then selecting an auto-pilot 'in' at a safe height, (say 500'), would not necessarily be a bad move.

In todays two crew environment with highly sophisticated automation on the flight deck I personally believe it would be foolhardy not to use all the systems available to your advantage.

I agree almost entirely with BlueEagle.

When the A/P is engaged, the PF monitors the autosystems, and the PNF gets on with his other tasks - getting the weather, updating the plog, talking to company or handling agents at destination, checking cabin crew are happy, talking to the SLF, etc. etc.

When PF hand flies, PNF has to have almost all his attention on monitoring the PF, and has to be listening to ATC. Other jobs threfore do not get done, possibly being postponed until they are urgent, and PNF is then working his socks off getting everything done, and is under stress. This is not a good idea. Stressed pilots make mistakes.

In a busy, complex TMA such as London, Paris, and many others around the world, hand flying is a luxury that we cannot afford.

Elsewhere, such as a simple procedure into a quieter airfield, there is nothing to stop the PF briefing the PNF on his intentions, asking if he minds the later stages being hand flown, and keeping his handflying skills brushed up.

In that last paragraph there are two very important points. One is to maintain CRM - ask the other guy if he minds and ask him in a manner that allows him to say no. The other is that it is important to keep your handflying skills maintained. Sod's Law dictates that if you let them get rusty, you will get an A/P fault that you can't handle. Part of being professional is maintaining ALL our skills.

Lastly, if a F/O as PNF is getting behind the game, he needs to be encouraged to speak up and ask for the A/P to be re-engaged. So the PF skipper needs also to maintain a monitoring watch on his F/O. This is more difficult when handflying, and needs more effort. Such effort is a necessary part of command.

Capn S,

Disagree almost entirely with your ideas. However my comments come from flying 3/4 engine heavy jets, with a Flight Engineer.

Have never ever asked a First Officer if he minded if I hand flew the aeroplane, just disconnected the a/p and got on with the job.

Likewise, have never had a First Officer ask me if I minded if he disconnected the a/p and decided to hand fly, and would not expect him to do so.

In addition, have had First Officers hand fly the aeroplane in the London TMA (as well as other very busy locations), and have had absolutely no problems whatsoever. This included line training new First officers on the equipment.
Having said this, most of these folks decided to leave the a/p engaged, on most occasions.

Low visibility approaches are, of course, a horse of a different color.

Old-fashioned ideas?
Others may think so, but they served me well for over thirty years.

411A, it neither surprises nor dismays me that you disagree with me - merely confirms my conviction that I have it right. :rolleyes:

And just for the record, Captain Stable, after eight hours in cruise on autopilot, I deliberately hand fly the machine from 10,000 feet agl all the way unto the pavement...just for the challenge! Doesn't matter whether it's into ORD or into DXB. And when it's my copilot's leg, he/she may do likewise. :eek:

DXB perhaps but handfly into ORD?

Last time I was there ORD was a very busy place and the workload on the PNF was high. It increases that workload considerably if the PF insists on handflying thus leaving all the MCP changes to the PNF just to add to his list of jobs, configuration changes, frequency changes, RT, monitoring the PF and lookout in a busy TMA etc. etc.

Do you carry a third crewmember GlueBall?

Hmmm, suspect a few here would not be able to past muster in a few companies....can't hand fly and keep the ship running normally?...out the door with a few folks.

Once noticed a fellow who tried to keep the a/p engaged all the time in the sim as well...failed and, color him gone.
Pronto.

411A
 

It is not a case of what one can or cannot do it is simply a case of whatever is safest! and you with your age and experience should know better!;) But you always did enjoy a good wind-up!

From the responses it appears that some folks would be at the edge of an emergency without at least one working autopilot...going into ORD, LHR, CDG.... :{

Auto pillock
 

When are people going to stop being macho about hand flying.

Most of you with a reasonable amount of flying/airline experience should be able to recognise when your workload is increasing.

When this starts to happen ask yourself if it wise to continue with this ritual because your company says you can, or if assigning mundane tasks to the autopilot so you can pull your weight on the flight deck and helping your colleague is a better idea.

I personally love disconnecting the automatics and polling around the sky as "raw" as possible. I feel enormous satisfaction in accurate raw data manual flying.

But,

There is a time and a place to do this which is not easy to define through sops. Beacause sops are usually constructed in a nice air conditioned office on the ground and normally written as a policy they can only cover so many situations. The rest is airmanship.

My instinct has been used on many occasions when deciding on when to engage and disengage automatics.

The auto pilot was designed to help us. It is one of many tools of our trade and that is how it should be treated.

Blue Eagle,

Ah, but sometimes it is whether the act of hand flying is relevant.

Case in point.
South asian airline with Lockheed TriStar equipment, and a newly joining Captain from the middle east...from an airline who used the a/p for autolands as normal ops.

OK, no problem....until this chap had to fly a non-precision approach...dark and dirty night, auto-throttle inop.
Co-pilot reported to flight ops that he ....'did not want to fly with this guy ever as three stall warnings on final were quite enough...thanks.'

IF the practice is not exercised...the ability goes away...very rapidly.:ooh:

During my Type Rating course on the 737 I remember to have seen a few training videos. ( think produced by United and American). One was dealing with the crash of the Birgen Air 757 a few years back. Apparently one airline in the States gave the same scenario 50 sets of crew in their simulator. None of them crashed. The training captain on that video mentioned, that the lack of hand-flying skills contributed to this accident because it seemed that in Europe a slightly different approach to commercial flying is practised than in the States: AP most of the time, especially in emergencies. Which of course could be a safe option, but could you put also outside the loop. The particular training captain encouraged his crew to hand fly the bird below 10000ft, if weather permits.

A collegue of mine was on a jumpseat of a Fed-Ex (i believe) DC-10 into New York a few moons back. He told me: all handflown. No AP ;) And silky smooth.
:ok:

I'm gonna jump in here and agree with BurgerThing and 411A. It seems many carriers in this region routinely ONLY hand fly the aircraft below 1000 AGL. Now, on a 14 hour trans-pac flight, how much time is actually spent hand flying the jet? I have to agree with 411A's statement in particular-it really does seem a case of use it or lose it...IMHO!
It's not a case of being macho, its a case of keeping skills sharp! :cool:

I refer the honourable readers to the reply I made a few days ago.

I stated that it was incumbent upon a professional pilot to keep all his skills up to date. Handflying is an important skill, and I have never heard anyone say "Don't worry - always let the automatics do it". Anyone who did would be an idiot, IMHO. Conversely, anyone who only hand flies is a fool, and I have seen quite a few pilots who could not or would not keep their skills on the automatics (FMCS settings etc.) up to date, and had no idea how to make their life easier when the workload was high.

However, as far as practising handflying, there is a time and a place to do this. Going into a busy TMA is, quite simply, not it. My personal opinion is that anyone who does so is eroding the borders of safety. Anyone who does so without consulting his colleague on the flight deck is rude and inconsiderate, risks further stress upon the other member of the flight deck crew, risks good working relationships and therefore further erodes safety.

My vote goes with 411.Too much reliance on automation these days.You never know when you're going to have to make a manual approach or a no-gyro or something.If you're flying raw data and the other guy selects LNAV or APP and looks all quizzical when nothing happens,then you know for sure that over-reliance on automation is not a good thing.
"Mind if I hand-fly it?" Never heard of that one.Thats what pilots do.Bit like asking "Mind if I do my job?"

Let us all be quite clear here. No one is advocating no hand flying, no one says that one day you won't need it if the automatics fail, (despite massive system redundancy on most modern aircraft), no one says that practise isn't necessary, in fact whether or not one should maintain hand flying practise is a question that, despite not having been raised, is getting plenty of answers here!

The question is whether or not the PF should dump the automatics in a busy TMA to hand fly and thus load up his PNF and thereby reduce safety margins and that is all.

Whether or not one asks/discusses with/tells the PNF that one is about to disconnect the automatics depends on the level of CRM in that company and just how sloppy or otherwise their flight deck procedures are.

No, Rananim, it is not equivalent to asking "Mind if I do my job?".

It is equivalent to "Mind if I suddenly unnecessarily increase your workload just as you were getting busy?"

Totally agree with captain stable! Practising hand flying is done at times of low workload and good weather conditions. Also, how hard can it be to hand fly a modern passenger transport... Sounds like some are afraid to suddenly suffer some sort of instant amnesia the moment they engage the AP? WIthout automation there wouldn't be enough room in the skies for the present traffick density, and overreliance on automation is usually some poor sod that didn't take the time to read the manual - and practice doing his job. Wasn't too long ago some real hands-on fellas collided mid-air because they didn't trust the automation.

Captain Stable and Crossunder - while I mostly agree with you, if we only practice hand flying in good weather we are missing out on some of the important bits of practice. On my previous aircraft (small base) I was known as someone who liked hand flying (only if it was safe to do so and the Captain wasn't against the idea). Because of this and my acceptance of hand flying from the other seat, some Captains felt happy to hand fly with me and if I flew a manual approach would say 'about time I had a go' or similar on the next one. All well and good, except that some of the hand flying was not quite up to scratch at times and after a couple of slightly dodgy approaches (visual at night, different Captains) I decided that it was better to practice in a variety of conditions. Obviously I would not fly a Cat2 approach to minimums in manual, but we do need to practice in cloud as it is different and can sometimes be quite disorientating even with experienced crews. It is too easy to sneak a peek in good weather and then we are cheating ourselves - and I have seen it happen so many times.

My own flying improved drastically (ie capacity increase and smoother) after practising no flight director approaches. In fact, when I first started and used the automatics most of the time, I was dissappointed at my lack of capacity when I took them out. Now I practice a lot more and I am a better pilot for it.

Busy TMA's are another place to practice - if we do not have the capacity (from either seat) to do it then we are lacking essential skills.

One Captain I flew with, complained after 2 manual departures with me flying and asked me to put in the autopilot - I did to preserve CRM, but his reasoning was that he had 'had enough for today' total hands on time was about 12 minutes (for the day) and I must admit that scared me.

Emergencies - different matter. We should do whatever we need to maintain capacity and assure a safe outcome. The autopilot is not always your best friend in that situation though as I discovered in the sim. Most of the time - I would put it in, but be prepared to take it out and hand fly if it would be beneficial, and practice in a variety of conditions makes your capacity much bigger.

Crossunder - Wasn't so long ago that a large aircraft hit a hill because the pilots were heads in dealing with the automatics instead of getting on with flying the aeroplane. Middle road is what we need, not extremes like Mr 411A.