Don't tar the rest of us with the 737 pitch-power coupling brush. In fact, some manufacturers recommend leaving the autothrottles engaged when hand-flying, as mentioned by Rojer. In my machine, it certainly does a better job than me when the conditions are bad.

Don't sell yourself short Bloggs, I've sat down the back of a B717 going in to Perth and I reckon manually controlled thrust would've given far fewer arse falling out of the sky feelings on approach.

Ya gotta "stay on the slope", Cat. ;)

To all pilots young and old,try and fly your aircraft once a month Best way to land at Kai Tak turn FD And auto throttle OFF, Famous West Coast USA controllers used to expect PILOTS to sort out their problems,easy,fly your aircraft Don't ever forget you are Pilots
OLD Guy

Am I missing a link to some sort of incident from the OP?

You are checkman.


Here: Incident: Easyjet A320 at Paphos on Jan 7th 2015, Alpha Floor Activation on approach

Indeed, that is the airbus philosophy, however it is not required. In my outfit 99% of all pilots fly most if not every approach in manual thrust, whenever they do fly in manual flight. And yes, flying without flight director and/or autopilot during a normal approach is nice training and actually quite a lot of fun, as well as being not an iota less safe than automatics on to 100ft AGL for a well trained pilot.

I guess it depends a lot on how you train your pilots and the philosophy of your company.

I have absolutely no knowledge of how the airbus is operated, as I fly the American competition. But recently I was flying with a 2000 hr F/O who told me that he had only one hour (yes really) on aircraft without glass cockpit. He had flown his trial lesson in a Cessna 150, then flown glass cockpit Cessna singles, glass cockpit piston twins, then the 737 NG. He was talking about the difficulty of his last OPC when given an FMC failure he had to fly a VOR hold (albeit still with Flight Director, FPV, Autopilot and Auto throttle).

This set me thinking about this incident.

At the last but one airline I flew for, a now defunct European charter operator, the absolute minimum experience for a captain was 5000 hrs, and most had far more. I used to fly with first officers who had been 737 captains previously but who could not be given a command because of this requirement, which was non-negotiable.

The reason that it was non-negotiable was because it was pure charter flying. If a charter came up to somewhere no one had been to, maybe with no approach aids or high terrain, or political issues, or anything else, you were expected to be able to take the crew and aircraft there, making full use of the experience of the F/O and the cabin crew, get the job done, and come home.

You were not expected to depart to a Greek Island, arriving after dark (based on the incident happening at 1523z at the beginning of January) and then elect to fly a visual approach, being handled by the pilot in the right hand seat who couldn't see what was happening because he was on the wrong side of the aeroplane, turning in the dark towards the terrain, not because you had to but because you wanted to play with some half assed non SOP "technique" that you had been shown in the sim instead of spending an extra 2 minutes going over the Pathos VOR and flying the procedural ILS.

Drawing circles around fixes on the runway threshold, and ninety degree abeam lines, and timing from abeam the threshold and all that other good stuff is primarily done because we have to train visual approaches in the simulator, but the visuals only go to ninety degrees and you cant actually see the runway until you are almost on finals. What happened to gear down and an intermediate flap setting abeam the threshold, turn finals after a couple of miles, about 500fpm descent on base then land flap once you see the papis and turn onto final, or something similar?

The problem now is that it doesn't happen anymore, and there is too much political correctness in the flight deck. Why have the F/O fly a visual approach if there is a left hand circuit, or the captain if it is right hand, unless it requires a Captains only landing? Unless you are circling by prescribed tracks (which for European pilots might mean places like Salzburg or Dubrovnik) then all you are really doing is flying a visual circuit, but most new pilots now have only flown five visual circuits in a transport size jet, or indeed none if they have flown a ten tonne turbo prop and done ZFT training.

In the "good old days", Dinosaurs like myself were still flying IFR around in the Northern European weather in ropy old piston twins with fixed card RBIs and CDIs when they had the experience levels this Captain had. We then flew turboprops and jets as F/O and (in my case) got into the left hand seat of a 60 tonne jet with maybe 10,000 hours. In the same AAIB bulletin as this incident there are three other airbus incidents (and they could just have easily been Boeing), two from EZ and one from small planet airlines. In those three incidents the PIC had over or just under 10000 hours with a minimum of 5000 on type, so why was the Captain in this incident a "safety management pilot", if that is true, with only 300 hours of experience on aircraft other than glass cockpit aircraft. At the risk of being politically incorrect what did he actually bring to that role? (and if he was a trained accident investigator with thousand of hours flying experience as a navigator in the air force I apologise, but I suspect he wasn't).

I guess this has been a long way around to the supporting the "airmanship" camp. The magenta line, the autopilot, the auto throttle, makes life safer, in the same way as years ago the RMI and HSI and flight director did. By the time you get to the left hand seat of an airliner you should not be prepared to experiment with a load of passengers on board. The job is not about having fun, or feeling good about yourself, it is about getting the passengers somewhere with no fuss and without frightening them. Learn new stuff in the sim, don't try it out on the line if you haven't done it before and it's not an SOP. If you think it should be an SOP tell talk to the chief pilot. Don't make stuff up as you go along.

Thanks for the link.

In light of what's written in the report, anybody care to comment on these two snapshots from CBT?

Attachment 821

Attachment 822

Oh how times have changed. To obtain a position as F.O. on a jet airliner back in the mid-1970's, the average time was around 2,000 hours...or so it seemed.

Manual Flying
 

Firstly, I have no expirence in larger Jets. I currently fly the Lear 31/45/60 series. With our company they encourage hand flying. You put the A/P and off when you wish. Hand flying ILS is encouraged, even down to mins. I appreciate that, we don't have auto throttle, it's just hands on flying. I personally would like to see more hand flying encouraged in the airlines so we as professional pilots keep our skills. As was mentioned, use it or loose...

This thread had been drifting sideways. Starting with Man(inexperience) then on to Machine(automation), Environment thankfully played no part in the incident mentioned. Bangalore in A320 and SFO in B777 were caused by very experienced pilots with thousands of hours in other jets undergoing command training with check captains as against Paphos flown by inexperienced FO under a captain. What is common in all three is that they all were flown by equally incompetent pilots. Saying it won't happen in 737 is a joke. Bangalore on approach the speed was 27kts. below Vapp, SFO it was 31kts. below Vapp. Not a single call, nudge, any recognition of it by anyone. It is not lack of knowledge of the system but lack of knowledge of simple mechanics of flying an approach that you don't fly an approach without monitoring your speed. Now about A320 flight control system and auto thrust. Airbus FBW aircraft maintains the flight path and auto trims you still can't fly it then perhaps you could have been better off as a doctor or a manager but outside the cockpit. Paphos incident happened not because of but despite the protection. 737 would have stalled in all three cases. You can fly 320 with or without auto thrust with or without automation. Flight controls and auto flight is the heart of the aircraft but it is not a rocket science. How much intelligence is required to know that you have to switch off both FDs to get ATHR in speed mode. It reflects on poor quality of training imparted. This is an ideal aircraft for 200 hrs. pilot because it demands very little skill. I have trained some experienced twin Otter and Dornier pilots whose IFR meant I follow river, VFR pilots. They fared very poorly as compared to 200hrs. guys. Their habits had hardened to throttle and stick and were unable to digest procedures and CRM.Thickness of log book in many cases shows how lucky rather than how good the individual was.

Spot on vilas. How is it possible that type rated Airbus pilots do not know that to engage the a/t in speed mode the f/d's have to be switched off? Makes sense if you think logically. It is scandalous that the training schools are releasing type rated pilots without this (very!) basic automation understanding.

i think with all the recent crashes and incidents the common factor is training. Or really the lack of it.
Seems more training in hand flying and the use of autopilots and auto throttles should be mandated.I
t does not have to be in Full flight sims. FTDs would do just as well.
An extra 2 days each year hand flying in FTDs would reap great benefits and not cost too much.

Seems more training in hand flying and the use of autopilots and auto throttles should be mandated. It does not have to be in Full flight sims. FTDs would do just as well.
An extra 2 days each year hand flying in FTDs would reap great benefits and not cost too much.

But there are operators that would baulk at this 'mandated' element as they encourage their crews to do this every day online. Those airlines that discourage this heresy would ask why, what's the point? Sad days for some, happy for others.

This cockpit had 7500 hours of experience. Both pilots had thousands of hours on type. We're not talking about cadets here.

I'm a fairly inexperienced Captain myself, with not many more hours than the Captain of this particular flight. I can therefore empathise with the crew. Furthermore, I've flown with many co-pilots days out of line-training and a number of 'career' FOs with more hours on type than myself, and everything in between.

According to my personal experience, the great danger is not necessarily with inexperience per se. I've flown with many very new pilots who take their jobs seriously and make up for their inexperience with strict adherence to SOPs and a conscientious eagerness to learn. Because of the element of 'training' involved in such flights, incidents are rare even if the overall level of experience of experience might be a latent concern.

In my opinion, the bigger worry is with cockpits containing moderate levels of experience where the experience gradient is also shallow. It's those cockpits where an element of bravado or machismo comes into play. As a puerile reaction to strict SOPs and a consequence of over-confidence, these crews are more likely to push the boundaries or carry out procedures without the appropriate experience or preparation. With opportunities to hand-fly becoming rare, the 'visual' is quickly becoming the manoeuvre of choice to get your 'fix'. There's an element of complacency too. An assumption that the other pilot knows what they're doing. An unwillingness by the commander to interfere if something isn't quite right.

As for this incident, I don't think I would have planned a dusk/night hand-flown visual approach in conditions of strong gusty winds, clouds below 3000 feet and Cbs in the vicinity after a nearly 5 hour flight. But following what I said above, it doesn't surprise me one little bit that this crew tried it... and failed to perform it properly*.


*I may be doing them a disservice.

Skill
 

Just remember if flying was hard engineers would do it.

Keep them up boys.
😁

Mikehotel152
 

If a crew cannot hand-fly an approach in the relatively normal conditions you describe in that part of the world, I would venture the opinion that they shouldn't be in a cockpit. OK you would probably choose to couple it up but, manually that shouldn't be too hard a task. Poor training??

There are airlines that have the experience of cowboy pilots, or pilots who thought they were **** hot. They screwed up. Solution? Increase training and enhance culture for better manual handling or restrict such behaviour.
Which is the better response?