"With modern technology an airline pilot today doesn't have to be as skilled as a B707 pilot needed to be in the 1960s. "

I would argue the opposite. 707 pilots didn't have to fly CDA's to an RNP approach... oh and 38 knot crosswind limits....

betpump5: good post :ok: and none of us see the profits that our companys earn from carrying said passengers around at 0 dark Oclock.*

At my company they have just told us that we don't need to record our LVP approaches any more, and this ties in with a suggestion I made some time ago, which was to record our raw data hand flown approaches instead - we could be required to show evidence of say at least three of them every 6 months.

These approaches would be done from an intercept heading and platform all the way to the landing, (obviously only in appropriate weather).

* It could be argued that the LoCos were created to exploit the previously untapped market of exactly those sort of people, but the trouble is that EVERYONE now wants to fly for virtually nothing AND still they expect the service of the 70's

As a regular pax I have a strong interest in feeling comfortable that the crew can handle most emergencies-by that I mean tricky weather redundant component failures etc not bombs/fatigue failure etc incidents which are relatively rare thank god.

However the pressure to cut costs-and to management pilots are a cost an nothing else -comes not from the type of pax you described-most of whom are perfectly ok people (unlike many of the front cabin folks who are rather less ok ethically) but from politicians and their poodle regulators. They have allowed training times and standards to slip and in doing so have failed to promote and preserve safety compared to the holy grail of promoting 'competition'; a strategy which if followed exclusively gets you a world with two airlines Emirates and Ryanair. So the complaints outside the company need to be directed there not at Joe Public.

The other issue about management seeking to de skill the workforce and then reduce their pay is commonplace in all industries in the last 20 years where it is now very unusual for a manager to be able to do the work of any subordinate because they started as junior managers and went upwards without ever learning anything. So again focus the pressure on the right people. If the DFO of an airline says at a board meeting procedure or policy xxx is unsafe then the other senior managers are not going to argue for fear of legal consequences but you guys have to get the DFOs of this world more on your side than 'theirs'. All the while the DFO says I think we can cut training time a bit or get a few more hours per crew member the suits are just going to accept it as gospel as it fits their purpose.


A view from the back-hopefully not too far back

Oh really?! When I flew the B707 our take off crosswind limits were 30 knots gusting 40 and landing 25 gust 35 - as near as dammit to 38 knots and a bit of journalistic licence was applied at certain destinations like Bermuda where we only carried island reserve and the runway was permanently out of wind.

"Management would rather have the automatics used and have fewer incidents occurr then have to deal with the inevitable incidents which will happen when pilots practice manual flying."

You might find that many of the latest/recent incidents have been caused by pilots not understanding or knowing the correct usage of the automatics, and being hesitant in taking over manually.

Sometimes quality saves the aircraft, I'm referring to the Cathay Pacific emergency landing in Hong Kong and the QANTAS A380 incident in Singapore.

The pilots involved were the cream of the crop, considerable money was spent on training them to a high standard and they enjoyed good terms and conditions of employment.

Unfortunately passengers won't pay for extra for ace pilots on the flight deck, hence the current race to the bottom with CX going from A scale to D scale and QF starting Jetstar.

Passengers complain about wanting extra legroom and better food, but when given the option of paying more for it they change their minds and go for the cheapest fare.

A B707 pilot had to be able to FLY his aircraft, there were no protections or back ups, auto pilot and flight director were rudimentary, there was no auto thrust. He had to be able to hand fly an NDB approach using pitch and power settings and manually compensate for changing wind whilst staying within tolerances. He would quite possibly finish off with a two engine landing with the rudder boost switched off in the simulator.

There is a "World no tobacco day", I propose a "No automatics day" were pilots switch off the A/P, F/D and A/THR and do without them for a whole day. I"ll make sure I'm on the ground and nowhere near an airport at the time.;)

My first reaction to Captain Harry Nelson’s comments as reported in Andy Pasztor’s Wall Street Journal article on April 12, was quite similar to my good friend’s, Centaurus, post … but that was a knee-jerk reaction on my part. However, in the following nano-second, reconsidering what I had been pounding the table for during my last three and a half decades of teaching/preaching aviation safety (to anyone who would listen to an over-worked federally employed, safety inspector) my long-held attitudes (those that originally prompted and kept encouraging my “table pounding”) fought their way to the surface … and my non-verbal comment, directed to Captain Nelson (in his absence) was “…great, but where have you been for the last 35 years?”

This non-verbal comment, particularly in juxtaposition with referenced articles regarding the US FAA having recently published another Safety Alert for Operators, or “SAFO,” urging airline training departments to incorporate scenario-based training, particularly in go-around training curricula for pilots, reminded me of the necessity for someone, someplace, to continue to pound on that “table,” frequently and regularly, pointing out the importance of training pilots on the basic understanding of what training a pilot actually means, brought me to my senses. Of course, I agree with the basis of Captain Nelson’s motivation, AND with the premise of the FAA’s most recent SAFO ... but no one, anywhere, should never have relied so heavily on the "automatics" that there would ever be any doubt about the knowledge and/or ability of the human pilots (and there are 2 of them!) to accomplish what is necessary to safely conduct that flight.

The basic thought is, and should always be, just as it has been – and should always be – recognize the training provided to airline flight crew members should be exhaustive and cover all the skills necessary to recognize the current “flight condition” of the airplane, at any time, know what that specific condition should be, and take the appropriate steps (i.e., make the appropriate control manipulations) to achieve the desired flight condition OR to correct that flight condition to the desired condition - from each moment to the next. That means … the training simply must include all the tasks that are, or might be needed, to safely fly from one place to another – properly and completely meeting and dealing with every expected (and unexpected) occurrence. This would have supposedly eliminated the need for recalling attention to performing missed approach/go-around maneuvers ... or any other specific skill set on which pilots should have been initially trained and periodically reviewed - and the concept of re-introducing "scenario-based" training, should not be necessary if the training methods used were, and remain, appropriate.

The training equipment currently available is the best that it has ever been – and when used the way it was designed to be used – it should result in each pilot having had the opportunity to see, assimilate, understand, and be able to apply all of what has been learned … and the instructors should have zero doubt about that point, or that instructor should not allow that student to be put up for any kind of evaluation of those skill sets.

The current training equipment is designed to be able to replicate the “real world” to an exceptional level, and when used correctly (which requires – actually demands - a knowledgeable and properly trained instructor), the concept of “scenario-based” training should be so imbedded in the training delivered that singling out such a specific aspect would logically be seen as wholly unnecessary – as this specific concept would have been the entire structure of the training, the practice, the learning, and the proficiency demonstrations – there should be zero doubt that the crew member in training understands and is comfortable in whatever operational “scenario” he or she might encounter.

I don't think you can put all the blame on Airbus. Both manufacturers and the airlines have been trying to dumb down the profession so that they could justify shorter training courses, (ccq,mpl) and then claim that pilots didn't do anything so they should be paid less. Despite the claims that flying is safer than it has ever been, the media has focused on MH 370 and Germanwings in a way that stirs up the visceral fear of flying a lot of people have. At the end of the day however any media attention to such things as pilot training will hopefully generate reasonable discussion.

As far as the assertion about flying being a "cool" job. There are still lots of young wannabes who still think this and from what I read on other threads cashed up not so young wannabes.

I never have, and I never will.

The thing about this industry is, now, it's harder than ever to tell, from the back, whether a pilot is competent or not.

Well, at least until...

There's the old saying that what Little Johnny did not learn, Big John will never be able to.

It's nice to have some top shots pick up what we've said since decades, but the remedy goes along the old lines and will not do the job.

It's the basic training and first 1500 hours that imprint the skills. No MPL, Ab Initio or similar hoax onto a 320/737 (or bigger) can compensate for a thorough basic training and build up of routine and experience on smaller, less managed and less sop-infested equipment.

As long as the initial shortcuts are maintained, any kind of synthetic training in the most sophisticated sims and any alibi manual flying with the FD on, along the magenta line will only be a band-aid.

It will be difficult to bring pilots up to required skills again. Most airlines with the aid of the industry and the regulators have bred a new kind of chief pilots, TREs and TRIs with themselves no thorough basic training and experience. This group will build a wall to the now suddenly again required skills, as it would disqualify them on the spot.

And it would cost money, the most powerful wall for improvement of safety ever invented. Nobody will be ready to fork out the required funds, no taxpayer, no airline and no passenger.

What will happen is the implementation of some lame encouragement to pilots to sharpen their skills en route, but curtailed by so many restrictions that it must remain lip service. There will be more so called "manual sim sessions" to satisfy the week reaction of regulators, but they will be so packed with unrealistic required scenarios and with so many resets, that the very small actual value is even more diluted within 10 minutes. Experienced instructors slowly die out or will be so disgusted at the T%Cs and all the restrictions, unnecessary a-c sops and other obstacles, that they no longer are willing or capable to transmit their know-how. More ex-manufacturer or ex-airline exponents will write exposés like Nelson and everyone will nod and applaud, but no one will actually be able or willing to root out the core problem.

But it's good that we all talked about it ........

One disappointing observation: some feed back from a training department is that one of the worst performed manoeuvres is a surprised 2 engine normal G/A; in the sim. yet this is one of the most likely encounters on the line. Most airlines have a 'no blame' policy for G/A's. They have a very strict stable landing gate criteria. Yet do they introduce practice of this manoeuvre every sim session? No: it's not a mandatory prof check item. It might occur in a recurrency LOFT, it might not. What adds to the screw up is that the SOP G/A is not written the same as a normal takeoff. So here is a badly performed manoeuvre; can happen as a surprise, or anticipated, but will always be a little stressful; is known to cause problems but is written different to the every day stressless takeoff. In other words the SOP is contributing to the mediocre performance. Surely that needs changing.

Many are asking why XAA's do not insist their national airlines adopt a more appropriate training syllabus. I ask, why has training been allowed to be diluted? Why has the basic MPL been cut to the bones? Why have prof check items not been updated in decades? Why have FTL's been stretched? Why has the whole industry been allowed to be dumbed down in so many aspects? IMHO the tail is wagging the dog and the lobbing of shareholder/share option rewarded managers is what is really controlling the industry. Often there is a discussion from XAA's to improve this or that and the push-back from the airlines is so great, due to loss of profit, that it goes away. If that initiative for improvement came from crews it is almost a death nell for the suggestion. I've worked under various XAA's. A common gripe from crews was the way companies circumvented the spirit of rules, be they FTL's, a/c defects, scheduling etc. The XAA's had deaf ears: but forget to sign a piece of paper 5 times or not fill out every box on a Nav Log and the feedback from the audit ran into pages. It didn't give one much confidence that the industry was in the good hands of the responsible oversee'ers. But then we rarely see any XAA in the dock. It is always either the crew, the company or the manufacturer. IMHO an XAA owns one of the holes in the cheese and sometimes it is open.

RAT5, I agree with your tone. :ok:

Money can do a lot of good when applied with care, but it also tends to steer an otherwise fine enterprise onto the rocks of greed and narrow-minded thinking, leading to a less-than-fine result...unless you're a shareholder and have no loyalty to a particular company's printed paper.

I have to agree with your comment about 2 engine missed approaches, Rat5. What's even more surprising is how many pax react to them as some sort of major emergency. (See any TV news report or newspaper article interviewing passengers after a go around.) It really was necessary to make a reassuring PA as soon as possible. On ultra long haul, where I had an extra crew in the jump seats, I would usually ask the other captain to make that all important PA quite early in the missed approach.

I've been extra crew (on ultra long haul) in the jump seat and witnessed almost frightening performance by usually quite competent colleagues in that manoeuvre. Before it was banned, (where the company insisted the procedure be done exactly 'by the book' using the highest level of automation available, which almost always resulted in a rushed procedure that was almost chaotic with 'hands all over the place' as you attempted to cover everything required with the aircraft rocketing towards the usually quite low missed approach altitude), I had my own procedure - after the initial climb was assured, I would take the aircraft out of TOGA and select a vertical speed of 1000fpm. This slowed everything down and made the whole procedure infinitely easier - and more comfortable - for all concerned, and much like a heavy or 'assumed temperature' take off.

This also made the reduction of power on reaching the missed approach altitude less extreme and so didn't freak the pax as much.

Handflying is a lost art. Those of us who have spent 1000s of hours beating around in all weather, summer winter, day, dark in light twins will gain not just a deep understanding of coping with weather and reading the sky but also an instinctive understanding and an ability to make judgement s on your own plus a certain amount of creative flying which wouldn't fit in the world of the airlines.

there has been too much emphasis on button pushing and automation, the nerd type computer operator more that the pilot.

we all had the image of the wise Captain from previous Eras the silver haired, fatherly figure with the knowing look in his eyes from years of experience when pilots had to be creative with the minimal navigation aids available back then.

with the automatics and nerd type pilots those skills have taken a second place as airlines have moved further away from the differences in skills and ability those pilots had to a much more set standards modern pilots hold and where pilot skills have to a certain extent been replaced by automatics.

Certain accidents have put the emphasis back towards raw handling and that can only be a good thing

MTOW,
I disagree with you. It's very unusual event that most passengers will have never experienced. In my 45 years of flying all over the world, I've experienced two go arounds, ironically on consecutive sectors. One was a non-event from three miles back due to a blocked runway, where the captain informed us in advance. The other however was more dramatic - in an MD-80 over the threshold at Heathrow, where we flew into a wake vortex. Full power was applied and we climbed away at a very steep angle. I found the experience very interesting, but I can see how non-pilot passengers would find it frightening.

I do agree that a reassuring PA is necessary.

More simulator time?
 

So, a very relevant question (at least to me) is:

"Would more simulator time be attractive to the average line pilot?"

The follow-up question to this would be:

"Does the simulator need to be a $10M Level D FFS, or would a fully functional non-flat-screen fixed based FTD-class simulator (at roughly 3-5% of the cost) be adequate?"

Basically the lower-cost FTD device would be a fully-functional hardware-based cockpit (switches, dials and screens as appropriate) and say a 150-dgree collimated visual on a 6-foot half dome.

If your airline had, say, a couple of these available for "free-play" would you use them?

If we accept line pilots, who are flying even half of the regulatory limits, coming back to the school house needing sim time to hone pitch, power and airspeed skills we have already lost.

This is not a training issue. That those skills are not allowed or required to be kept at acceptable levels while flying the aircraft is a policy issue.

I think sim time is useful regardless. That's because in day-to-day flying you can only work within the parameters of normal commercial flight, whereas to really "hone" your skill, you need to keep exploring limits of the flight envelope.

You're not going to do approach to stalls or practice unusual attitude recovery with 400 souls on board.

But "free-play" is not training. For training to be effective you need to have clear objectives, a structure/curriculum, and measurements of areas to improve.

You don't want pilots developing bad habits from free-play that they will take to the aircraft. Or learn something wrong in the sim due to lack of fidelity and supervision, only to get surprised when the behavior of the real aircraft is not at all the same.

Airlines are better off training pilots as a crew, not just have individual pilots go at it in a basic FTD in their own time. Which brings me to another point... training should not be "voluntary" (unpaid).

What changed the industry was privatisation. I'm shocked that an educated, non fish-and-chip-eating pilot could fail to understand this—and instead blame it on his passengers!

Standards are lower today because state-owned airlines ran at a loss and were subsidised by taxpayers (tracksuit-wearing yobbos). Regulators were well paid and well funded, there were far fewer pilots and we still had a state education system to speak of.

The people who voted to change all that (and continue to do so) were far more likely to be pilots than tracksuit types. You want to know where this cost-cutting mentality comes from? Rich people who want a low-cost state so they can pay fewer taxes. Great idea chaps.

GarageYears brings up something I have been wondering about. In addition to time in less expensive simulators, how about time in actual less expensive aircraft? I have heard several people say that time spent in the smallest aircraft you can find, and maybe preferably gliders, is the best way to get the intuitive feel for the basics.

My only real flying has been in gliders, and it is all about energy management, which would seem to be equally applicable to engine-out situations. Ok, you aren't going to work thermals in an Airbus, but Captain Sullenberger said that his experience in gliders back at the AF Academy is what let him land his A320 in the Hudson river.

"Handflying is a lost art. Those of us who have spent 1000s of hours beating around in all weather, summer winter, day, dark in light twins will gain not just a deep understanding of coping with weather and reading the sky but also an instinctive understanding and an ability to make judgement s on your own plus a certain amount of creative flying which wouldn't fit in the world of the airlines."

I never flew light twins and I am working for a major airline. But I fly manually since 25 years, being tired and Vis blw 800m (FD required) made the only exceptions. It stays solely within the responsibility of every single pilot to stay in training. Management or training standards are no excuse, if someone fails to perform.

And so I saw a considerable increase of the spread within the last decade. Although we have four simulator events per year, this does nothing for the manual skills. It is the hours on line, which make the difference. This training is "for free" for the company. Some use it, and get better, or keep their high standard, and others don't.

Landing accidents make a big percentage nowadays. This does not surprise me. FD and autopilot don't help at the most demanding exercise.

Metroman,
A bit of an exaggeration there, Boeing did not even publish a Vmca2 rudder boost off, the words in the manual were approximately:
Vmca2, rudder boost off is too high to be of practical use.
On a B707-320 it was around 230-240 knots.

Very pleasing to note a very general agreement that we know about the problem but can't fix it because we are back to the old "Bean Counter"situation. Maximum use of the automatics is often demanded because it is perceived to be more cost effective than encouraging hand-flying practice.Commercial Departments will insist on this being passed through the Fleet Office into the hands of the Line Pilot. Chief Pilots will comply because they like their jobs. Nothing more costly than a prang though. A "near prang" will serve to concentrate minds a bit and extended training through re-sits can prove costly too. I join the majority by agreeing that the obvious solution will be denied because of cost. Shameful.

The Airbus speaker might want to bring that presentation to a gathering of airline management from all who fly airbus products in their fleet. Without funding, where is the training going to come from?

Airbus design philosophy
 

I think it is fair to say that the Airbus fly-by-wire technology and general design philosophy represented a significant step forward when it was first introduced and to this day, on-balance, has made a significant contribution to improving safety and efficiency. Us pilots are often a conservative and cynical bunch, however, it does not matter if you fly an Airbus or a Boeing. On either type the majority of the time is spent 'flying' the aircraft on automatics (just on the B the cockpit is a retro throw back to the sixties :p)

So moving this argument on it is not fair to argue that the Airbus design philosophy is responsible for the dumbing down of flying skills when in fact it has probably prevented a great number of accidents. You could probably prove this quite easily.

Furthermore, if the issue is lack of flying skills - then why on earth would you want to circumvent the very systems that are there to protect the pilot from himself :eek:

I also do not believe that the issue is driven bean by counters per-se. The issue is experience. The fact is that demand for air travel has grown exponentially. This demand requires pilots at an increasing rate. You cannot fast forward experience - this requires time served in the cockpit of an aircraft (be it an Airbus, Boeing or even a C152).

It is normally experience that saves the day and unfortunately experience is often something you don't get until after you actually need it :mad:

Agree. Flight directors were designed as an aid to instrument flying. Instead we see time and again pilots blindly following FD commands regardless of the true attitude of the aircraft. Over the years, the FD has become God Almighty in the eyes of many pilots - experienced or inexperienced. They are mesmerised by it. To switch off the FD even in fine weather is practically a criminal offence in many airlines.

"Follow the bloody flight director" is a phrase too often heard in simulator training and as soon as you hear those words you know the check pilot or simulator instructor is just another automatics addicted tragic.:ugh:

How hillarious. When I said exactly the same to xxxx lo-co airline, I was told I was a Neanderthal who needed to move into the modern aviation world. The quote was: "passengers don't pay for you to improve your hand flying skills.". It looks like reality has caught up with the naive progressives, as it always does.

However, as I said them, this is not simply a matter of more handflying jets. These newbies need a four-week gliding course, not simply to brush up on hand flying skills, but to test themselves when the pressure is on and heart is beating fast. Try doing a landing into an unknown farmer's field, of largely unknown elevation, quality and texture, with no possibility of a go-around. Performa few of those, and you can call yourself a pilot.

Maybe some recent time in a non-automated small aircraft should be a requirement, just to keep up those basic skills. And get checked on it. It would be quite inexpensive comparatively. What do the fancy sims cost per hour, with instructor?

The long wing on a glider (over 50 feet on a craft weighing 1,000 pounds) makes it respond slowly to control inputs in roll and yaw, imitating somewhat the response of a much heavier craft.

Folks,
I would remind many of you, who malign the MPL, that the majority of the non-US airline have been putting the product of cadet schemes in the RHS with 200-250 hours, since the early 1960s.

All the MPL does is allow a more effective training, within the hours, by more fully utilizing Level 5 through 7 FSTD, instead of accumulating a few hours on light singles and( if you are lucky) twins.

If you seriously look at recent accidents, there is no correlation with being a low hour pilot, and the accident record.

I do most certainly agree that hand flying standards have seriously deteriorated, with the results that most of us who have been around since the only "computer" on the flight deck was labeled Dalton, had no trouble predicting years ago ---only to be labeled dinosaurs by the "progressives" (great description, whoever came up with it).

The reality is that the REAL basics of flying have not changed since the "airline" was invented, just improving design has made the basic job easier.

The automation is there as an aid, to help, it should not (but probably has) become a workload increasing hindrance ---- a situation that is entirely reversible, now that Airbus and Boeing have had the message rammed down their throats by the recent record.

And it provides experience of many components of aviation that have been lost in the compu-jet age. Things like:

The clutching-hand (instant stall) effect of low-level windshear.
The inability to turn in low-level windshear (if you have long wings).
The correct technique for extending a final glide.
The huge effect of rain or bugs on a supercritical wing profile (have you seen the in-flight bug removing machines?)
The effects of weight on glide (you need to be as heavy as possible).
How to cloud climb with a 30 deg angle of bank, only using a turn and slip and airspeed.
How to fly and navigate simultaneously (throw out the gps).
How to fly with no instrumentation (instructors are known to stuff paper in the pitot).
How loading effect the flying and stalling, with huge difference between max forward and aft.
How to stall 50 times in one flight, and consider it absolutely normal (rough winter thermals). (with no height loss, I must add).
How to land in one spot, and not where the aircraft takes you (rest of the field covered in gliders and sheep)

I could go on.....


A semi-automatic glider bug and rain remover in action - demonstrating how wing contamination effects stall and performance.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-4...1318925425.jpg

I have to say I find some of the mean-spirited comments on this thread very disappointing. Blame the passengers, blame the foreigners... :(

I'm a firm believer that the actual issue lies with airline management, but it is a problem shared across commercial industry in general, as the rise of the MBA effectively phased out managers who came up through the industry concerned and replaced them with people trained in pure business theory. There are industries in which that's not so much of a problem, but I'm convinced aviation isn't one of them.

Long-time poster PJ2 has written several very insightful posts on the subject, well worth reading. Here are a couple of them:

http://www.pprune.org/safety-crm-qa-...ml#post3441359

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/48977...ml#post7306229

In previous topics about maintaining manual flying skills, I've written a few replies which I think would add to the discussion in this topic.

Perhaps you would care to read what I have to say about it.
(Just the opinion of someone with more then 13 yrs and over 10.000 hrs experience on the A320 alone)

Maintaining Manual Flying Skills
Why would using automation be safer then manual flight?
Why would flying with automatics on be more cost effective?
Low time cadets are not dangerous if your airline has a good training department and SOP's!

Readsled

We have had this discussion in the private flying forum where there have been a spate of tragic loss of control and failure to recover accidents which should not have happened had the pilots been trained more in basic handling and recovery skills.

A lot of the emphasis has changed to recovery at incipient and there were some PPLs who posted that they were scared of stalling on their own because they had never experienced what could happen beyond the incipient or how to recover using basic flying skills like spin recovery or spiral dives or rather knowing the difference.

Again talking about PPLs the aircraft have become very sophisticated and these PPLs are flying out of their capability relying on the autopilot and automations to compensate for their own lack of instrument flying capabilities.

The trouble with automation is it has a habit of going wrong as do autopilots.
Ok thats PPL stuff and ATPLS are trained to a much higher standard and uniformity but still there is a trend across both which is worrying.

In airline flying there have been accidents which have been caused by too much autopilot and automations with basic handling forgotten and a failure by some pilots to manually recover or identify certain situations.
So maybe this goes deeper than we think

Flying up to RVSM airspace pilots should where possible hand fly especially in good weather or out of quieter airports

When NASA was training pilots to fly the space shuttle to a landing I believe they modified the controls in a corporate jet to simulate the predicted response of the shuttle to control inputs. With today's technology I would think it would be possible to do the same with a small jet like a Citation Mustang and have it respond like whatever airliner you wanted. You could then allow line pilots to hand fly those. It would give crews actual hand flying time at a fraction of the cost of flying the actual airliners.

Absolutely correct, to the degree that something like 15 years ago (knowledge about the limits of simulation, automation dependence etc., and the need for hand flying competency is not new) several specially strengthened Citation were built, for in-flight upset and recovery training with real G-loads.

If I recall correctly, they were used initially by the US Navy, and proved the idea.

Colleagues and I, with a view towards upset and recovery training, particularly to the cohort of airline pilots to whom 35 degrees angel of bank was an "unusual attitude (ie: had never done any aerobatics, maybe never even spin and recovery) approached a number of US and Australian airlines.

In each case the answer was the same --- when it is required by regulation, we will look at it.

In each case (5 airlines) the good sense and value of the idea was not disputed by the airline's training department, just the cost -- if "the opposition" didn't have to bear the same costs, forget it.

To this day no simulator can, and probably never will, be able to realistically simulate an upset and recovery.

A number of airlines around the world already conduct their training with specially modified / equipped business jets. (And have done so for many, many years!)

I wrote this in a previous similar topic. I reacted to some quotes by other members.
Wrong!! Manual flight can be more effective then using the autopilot! Are you one of those pilots who would use HDG and V/S to fly a visual approach or a circuit? Once you master manual flight, under certain circumstances it's much easier and just as safe (or safer) then letting the A/P do it! If you haven't done it already, you really should take the time to watch children of magenta. It's a very old speech, but still very much applicable today!
You're right about that! If the PIC of the flight I'm a passenger on, sees it as an adventure :ugh: to disconnect the automatics, I would prefer him to keep the A/P on! Better yet: I'd prefer not to be flying with this guy. I want my pilots to be convinced that they can handle the plane just as safely by hand then through the A/P! Let me assure you sure you that whenever I disconnect that A/P I'm convinced that I can fly the plane at least as safely as the automatics! I don't feel an adventurer when doing so, but I agree it is much more FUN handflying my A320 through a visual then taking the vectors to the ILS with A/P on!!! And what are you going to tell the pax when the pilots let a perfect plane crash simply because tha auto-flight system did not behave the way they expected it to and they were letting the plane crash because of it? Absolutely! The pax deserve pilots who are fully proficient! I cannot imagine the Asiana crash would have happened if the PF hand been handling the thrust levers himself instead of relying on A/Thr! Even if he was very rusty and uncomfortable with it, I'm sure that he and his training captain would have been monitoring airspeed, pitch and thrust and the worst that would have happened was a go-around but certainly not a crash! True! read what I have to say about that! Wrong!!! Every time there's nothing from stopping you (too much traffic, too tired, low visibility or cloudbase...) you SHOULD handfly your plane. Only then will you stay/become so proficient to make you convinced that you can be just as safe as when using the A/P! Only then will you become confident enough to instantly take over from a failing or mismanaged auto-flight system! The Qantas crippled A380 crew had to hand-fly the final app because the A/P couldn't handle it. I'm glad they were proficient enough to handle it! Would the outcome have been different if the A380 had belonged to an other company? Some Korean company? I would hope not...
You could even say that you should change your job if you're not comfortable HAND-FLYING that plane. I'll say it again: they're all big Cessna's. A correct pitch, bank, speed, thrust setting and configuration is all you need!! Uneasiness about manual flight is only in the mind brought about by stupid SOP's and a dangerous lack of currency!! Aren't they? How do you expect somebody new on type to get really proficient then? Let him/her fly a couple of dozen sectors with an empty airliner? No!! Consider every flight as a training opportunity! That doesn't mean you should start experimenting or taking risks of course. By all means, keep it safe! But, the very fact that you seem to be thinking that manual flight would be less safe, suggests to me that it's time to start thinking about your proficiency in manual flight! Boy, am I glad we have a good training department in our company! Amen to that!

peekay4,
For my benefit, could you nominate the airlines, please, and what types and where is this training being conducted.

I wonder why a very steep angle was used? In my 45 years of flying I've found that rarely if ever would that be required, even for terrain.
I still make a PA though as the pax may be wondering and I like to try and keep them informed when appropriate.