Tee Em,

Please don't think that hand flying with FDs on should be done to the exclusion of with the FDs off. I my points are in addition to yours, I am simply saying that it isn't pointless and such practice should not be considered as such as per my afore mentioned specific points.

night mission,
I don't wish to appear argumentative. We hand fly often and I can't say that I have noticed significant workload increases or loss of SA as a result. The PM role doesn't change except for twiddling more knobs and switches and the PM needs to remain just as aware with automation on or off.

May be more a function of the particular mission. In my fleet we fly mainly long haul, with departures often in the early AM from airports we have infrequent experience with. I would agree, with more landings per month we would all be better able to fly hands on with less energy devoted to the art of flying and more directed to the external issues prevalent at complex, demanding airports/departure environments.

While acknowledging the importance of horses for courses, hand flying is a bit like Goren's view in respect of bridge play when he observed "the more I practise, the better I get" ...

Game - Set - Match, to JT :ok:

What is safest at a given point in time?
 

I understand the need to stay competent with manual flying but I have a fear that the lawyers might one day restrict the choice. You are handflying on Flight XXX and an accident results. The victim's lawyers have access to a report saying that the safest thing to do is have A/P engaged. Saying that handflying on Flight XXX is for the benefit of all other subsequent flights might not be easy to argue and unless your airline can prove the long-term benefit of having a minimum of handflying practice then do they leave themselves open to higher risk/legal claims?

Pedant Mode 'ON'

Or, in response to people who told him how lucky he was to keep winning, he replied, "Yes, the more I practice the luckier I get"?

Pedant Mode 'OFF'

We are really talking about the extreme ends of the same piece of string. At one end we have the brand new pilot who has done the absolute minimum of hand flying required for a licence and gone straight to an electric jet and is totally unaccustomed to hand flying it, whilst at the other end of the string we have the old hand who simply doesn't like all this "new fangled electronic stuff" because they don't properly understand it and want to resort to their basics when trouble occurs, dumping a whole load of help in the process.

Those are the extremes, now to find the happy medium somewhere towards the middle!

(Personally I would legislate that every new pilot fresh from school with a new licence does a minimum of 1500 hours in GA before even touching a multi crew aircraft! I can guess how popular that would be!).

And more importantly:

It's just plain good fun :)

the more I practice the luckier I get

OK, so I paraphrased it a tad for the purposes of the thread ... a bloke can't get away with anything here ... sheesh.

When we next catch up for an ale, I shall toast your alertness ..

Those are the extremes, now to find the happy medium somewhere towards the middle!

.. and you are, of course, absolutely correct. Horses for courses is the name of the game.

The concern must be for those who either can only do one or the other or, irrationally, incline in like manner.

Maybe, but actually a new pilot straight onto a jet has a disproportionately large amount of hand flying experience compared to an experienced jetter. I can't speak for everyone but I was pretty comfortable with hand flying the 737 before and after my base training, so was everybody in my group from what I could tell.

If the automation fails....Old Smokey
 

A most excellent statement, Sir! It is most certainly possible for the automation to fail. To wit, last year, on approach into KBWI the MCP (on our B763ER) decided to go on strike. Everything failed: A/T, A/P, FDs, etc.

Guess what? I went immediately back to my Piper/Cessna/B727/B737 days and flew that b*tch, well, like a big ol' Cessna.

At my company, "Click, Click" (at any point from TOD to landing) is not discouraged.

God Bless Mr. Boeing and the wonderful B727! (I'm not biased, am I?)

Yes, the 727 was a wonderful airplane and when we got rid of them went to the 757/767. So many times I resorted to 727 type flying with two clicks including my initial checkout when the check airman totally screwed up the automation so disconnected and turned on course in a climbing right turn when he had us in a descending left turn. He eventually caught up so could reingage the autopilot.

I don't ever want to fly with a pilot put in an automatic airplane with no hand flying airplane experience. Sometimes those unexpected short turn ons because of wx on final are challenging for someone that knows how to hand fly.

Or 250 (kts) to the Marker. A skill long lost these days.

You (and all other B727 drivers) know what I mean.

An opposite point of view written by a Pprune contributor during another thread on automation was "automation robs situational awareness through absence of physical/sensory cues of flying the machine and as a result atrophies flying and thinking skills.

As another poster has already said, there is a time and a place for everything and arrivals and departures in busy, crowded airspace with frequency changes galore and a very busy ATC environment is no time to be practicing, that is how heights are bust and ATC calls are missed.

That is not an opposite point of view to Night Mission's post, is it Centaurus? More a statement of fact in a very general way and not attributable exclusively to the high workload elements of a flight.

Once again, there is a time and a place...

Remember the days when hand fying an airplane wasn't classified by some as practicing? I guess I spent my first 15,000 hrs practicing then. Sad.

You didn't have a choice bubbers, so of course, it wasn't practicing, it was all you had.

Practise on sim
 

In regard to that though I do try and practise on my flight sim at home (fs2004) with some of the pmdg airliner addons like the 737,747 and md11 during the times when I might not have been able to hand fly as much as I liked ie weather etc. It is ok for doing procedures with autopilot on in but very very twitchy and sensitive in manual, an eager captain said that if you can fly in fs04 with it being so sensitive you can fly anything, does anyone have any ideas on a flight sim that doesn't cost the earth where you can practise hand flying with something that some what feels like the real thing?

Many thanks

I find the argumentation for handflying only when "in good weather conditions" or at "the appropriate, calm airport" strange.

Shouldn't we all not just be able to do it everywhere all the time, period?

Have you ever heard of a fighter pilot saying something like "Well, I will only pull up to 5G ever, because 9G is just way too tough!" or a a surgeon claiming he will only operate if no complications arise.

Isn't it just simply part of our job description to be able to do this stuff without hesitation and in full competence?

My point is that the argument of putting extra workload on the other pilot is void in my opinion. If the other pilot can't handle the extra workload for a couple of minutes, he shouldn't be sitting there at all.

I'll probably get a lot of flack for this post. But this is my view on the matter.

I've flown with a multitude of FO's/Capt's who want to handfly but prefer to wait until autoflight has captured the LOC/GS, AT has set the power in speed mode, and are inside the outer marker.
Bottom line, people are scared of handflying, scared of making mistakes, scared of losing face. However, it takes many mistakes to improve.
As one has previously stated, best to look beyond the FD to see what raw data pitch attitude autoflight is commanding. It's not brain surgery to know approx. pitch att/ power setting for all intermediate slat/flap/gear positions.
Hand flying without FD/AT is ONE of the best ways to maintain high levels of competence, done in appropriate circumstances depending on traffic etc. etc.
There's still plenty of time to read the paper, do the crossword, and maybe spend 10 minutes seeing what's up in the QRH.

D105,
Piona
I completely agree. Somebody who finds hand flying uncomfortable in anything other than so called 'ideal' conditions probably is not prepared to takeover from the A/P at a moments notice. A rare example a while back on a VNAV VOR approach in IMC. The aircraft bizarrely started to climb at the FAF, recovery by changing the AP mode would possibly have left us too high to remain stable so I decided to disconnect and correct accordingly, flying the remainder of the approach manually.

Reducing the level of automation (V/S mode for example) would also be a valid response too, but a go-around probably the most likely result in my view due to then speed of response to AP inputs.

I am an advocate of hand flying as often as possible, but in IMC it is better just to use at least the FD, just in case any abnormal situation happens to occur that day. Things probably will get worse than in a hand flown case in such a scenario.

Appropriate level of automation - that includes telling the other guy to turn on, or off, the a/p if they, or the a/p, isn't getting the job done. :ugh:

Sure it wasn't just going for the missed approach altitude, that being the next 'hard' one in the box if you don't put anything in after the FAF?:confused:

(Just curious, it happened to me during my intro. to FMCs in a B737-300 in 1986, training sector, training capt. let it all continue as a demonstation of what can happen, sent back to read the books, emphasis on 'hard' altitudes etc.! - dumped VNav and used Fl Change with speed intervention thereafter.)

Not to worry everyone! It seems that a pprune detective has already appeared on the scene.

For god's sake.

Ah yes, the standard, quite useless, sniping one liner we have come to expect from d105. Go to bed old chap, sleep it off.

I have always found that concentrating solely on the flight directors following an engine failure after take off increases the work load significantly since the intense scrutiny needed to keep the needles exactly centred leaves no time to be aware of what is happening outside of the immediate area of the instrument.

The slightest aircraft attitude may cause one or both of the two needles to change position and one is automatically driven to `follow` them blindly at the expense of other things around you.

In the simulator, I have seen many pilots lose the plot due to over controlling when they over-react to flight director information and chase the offending needle (s) in order get things squared away. One man's `chasing` is another man's `correcting. Everyone's a critic when this happens. ... and doesn't it piss you off when the instructor steadily intones "fly the bloody needles".

The technique this scribe favours with an engine failure after take off, is to immediately use the standby ADI as the primary attitude reference. Of course there will be howls of indignation from FD aficionado's. Yet there is also evidence that some pilots are seriously spooked by FD needles during coping with engine failures. The slightest yaw produces rapid needle movement and in the haste to get the needles squared away in quick time, pilots may over-control causing more fluctuation of the FD needles.

It then becomes a vicious circle rather like trying to control a dutch roll. Although some instructors exhort their students to "look through" the FD needles to see what the primary ADI is telling them, I find the FD needles often cover the pitch indications on the face of the ADI and again this causes loss of concentration on what should be a simple task of flying the appropriate pitch attitude for the circumstances.

If there is a knack to "looking through" FD needles to see what the primary ADI is displaying behind the needles, then this suggests that FD are over-rated and may cause more grief than they are supposed to prevent

The beauty of switching one's glance to the standby ADI for basic climb out attitude is that it is unencumbered by superfluous other information. In the simulator I have observed others who admit to shamelessly disregarding the `dancing needles` of the FD information in favour of the pure instrument flying ability needed to use the standby ADI.

Choosing to switch off the flight director if it is distracting you from the prime job of flying the aircraft accurately on one engine will generally arouse the ire of some simulator instructors. They forget that flight directors are an aid - not a `you will crash without them`, item.

Switching your scan directly to the standby ADI solves the problem because the instructor wouldn't have a clue where you are looking. To students who have difficulty and are spooked by the FD needles during engine failure after lift off, my advice is to use the standby ADI every time. In every case that I have seen (hundreds during type rating training in the simulator) it has worked and they have had no further problem with accuracy of climb out. The fascinating part is that after using the standby ADI as primary attitude instrument the FD needles are magically centred.

I am SO GLAD and conforted that our industry is not lost yet, and that common sense and airmanship still exists among Pprune members.

FD are there to give you guidance. (at least the cross-bars). They are a tendency indicator, indicating what George would do. George has no brain, only a chip.
You, the pilot have the brain and are the ultimate checker and decisionmaker. NEVER GEORGE. See through the F/D when using it.
Once people "get" this, they will start flying smoother. A remedy I often use with FO's who are "less than smooth" in their controls. Is to let them fly the aircraft by putting F/D's off and then telling them to control the aircraft with putting pressure on the yoke by only using the "pushing" hand. Smoothly and without yanking like a horny teenager:ok:
It almost always result in a confortable flight, happy passengers and crew and a happy aircraft:}

For the Engine failure: remember that on some variants of the Boeing, the FD is not to be followed in the original aftermath from a failure. Keep your track to the original RWY (so important!), keep your pitch for the required speed. Do not pump but be gentle, your plane has just lost half of her juice, she is upset...

regards,

Despegue "the Belgian".

Mrs-Rodge,

Sounds like you are an FR pilot not based in the UK.

One of the best things about this company is the raw data flying!!

Wally.

First of all, I would like to thank Irishpilot1990, Microburst2002 and Mrs-rodge-bless-her for their comments about Sabena pilots. I'll take that as a compliment! :O

I'm glad to see that almost everybody seems to agree that it is necessary to stay proficient in handflying airliners with raw data!

A quote from paull (#47): I would like to argue that there are quite a few accidents resulting from badly using/understanding/monitoring the automatics. The Turkish crash in AMS and the Air Inter crash in Strasbourg immediately come to mind. Those crashes would not have happened if a pilot would have been handflying.

I am convinced that pilots should use the automatics intelligently. That includes using the automatics when there is a good reason to use them and NOT to handfly the beast when there's a good reason not to! I remember when I was a 737-classic F/O in Sabena and flew with a very young captain who had just been promoted to the left seat. He was PF to a Scandinavian airport with snow and the cloud base and visibility reported very close to the minima with a 15 kts crosswind. He disconnected "everything" at 5000' and then handflew the 737 perfectly to the minima and landed perfectly. I still think he's a fool who was just trying to impress me. I can assure you that he didn't! Fortunately he was an exception at Sabena and almost all other captains were much smarter. Confronted with the same conditions now I would use the A320's auto-features to bring it on the ILS fully stabilised and then disconnect A/P and A/T to continue with the F/D on. Why not leave the A/T on and just disconnect the A/P at the minima you might ask?

Well, I believe that any pilot, after some practise, is more intelligent and better at managing thrust then the Airbus A/T system! This is what I wrote in an other post: I also believe that it's best to disconnect the A/P a little before the minima, especially in gusty and windy conditions, just to have a little more time to get it "in your hand" again.

I am very much in favour of using either all automatics (A/P, A/T + F/D) ON OR everything OFF. I think you could actually train a chimpanzee to follow a flight director, so I do not like it very much when one of my F/o's keeps handflying the A320 with F/D on during climb until long after flap retraction. What's the point??? Any chimpanzee can do that! :rolleyes: The same during approach. What use can it have to fly a descent + final app with A/P off but F/D and A/T engaged? You don't have to think or keep situational awareness for that. :ugh: Just smoothly follow the F/D cross!

So this is my own personal policy: Take off is done in the "normal" Airbus way with F/D on. I usually engage the A/P when the flaps are up. (I leave the A/P to do the chimp's job) Once in a while I'll do a take off with the F/D's off. (as per the procedure in FCOM 4.05.30 P5) And yes, handling an engine failure with F/D off would not be a problem! (We have been taught to initially rotate up to 12,5 deg and fly through the F/D's anyway in such a case.)

Every time I do not feel too tired, traffic is not too busy and the weather is not too lousy or I can't come up with a good reason why I shouldn't, somewhere during the descent I will switch to handflying the ship.

I am 100 % convinced that, if common sense is used, this will not impair safety. On the contrary!!

So my advice to everybody is: use common sense, make sure you know how to handle the automation but also make sure you can handfly your A/C smoothly and accurately in any situation! You can only stay proficient by doing it regularly!

Sabenaboy

I believe the FD can be a hinderence during the V1 cut. You have to fly through them to nail your pitch attitude (10 degrees for my type).

We had a manual handling sim session a few years ago, during that time we did some FD off EFATO training. As a whole this was flown a lot more accurately as the FD was not there to distract, just rotate to 10 degrees, then at acceleration pitch down to 7.5 degrees, seems to work very well.

I am lucky that I work for a company where manual flying is encouraged, it still amazes me how so few people,when it is appropriate, take the opportuntity. I started this job because of a love of flying, and flying is just what I look to do (just wish I did it better!).

Nothing like doing the visual valley arrival into INN flying the aircraft like a big Cessna, it's why I signed up.

10 degrees pitch up with EFATO?
 

@Gatbusdriver: I hope the "Current a/c Type" (330/320) in your profile is not up to date! :eek:

Hi John,


Google helped me find the Cathay 330/340 FCTM. It says: I have no experience in the A330, but I think that pitching up to 10° only in the A320 in case of EFATO, will not get you airborne under ALL weight/flex thrust combinations. Is your company's FCTM provided by Airbus or was it made in house?

In the mean time I have looked at some of Gatbusdriver's previous posts and found out that he's on some Boeing-type lately. :ok:

Hi Sabenaboy,

The FCTM continues to say:
With practice, and especially on long runway lengths available, some crews use a slightly slower rotation rate and get airborne with an attitude closer to 10 degs pitch, at V2 and satisfy the SRS orders.

Yep, precisely, first make sure you get airborne and THEN follow the srs-orders (smoothly).

I'm not sure pitching up a 77 Ton A320 to 10° with reduced flex thrust will get you airborne. I'd say: go for 12,5° initially and then follow the srs as per FCTM!

Hi Sabenaboy,
If the SRS commands 10 degs pitch in order to maintain V2, then you will get airborne at that same pitch attitude.
The 12.5 degs is the datum to aim for to ensure you get airborne before the fence. If the runway is very long, what is the advantage of getting airborne with the speed below V2?

bit of thread drift:
12.5 is no holy number. at the end of the day you have to satisfy the regulations by crossing the threshold at V2 and 35ft minimum by flying whatever pitch that requires.
12.5 is for TOGA at medium weights. Other combinations of Flex, Weight and Vspeed optimization will require an adapted pitch. 10 deg will get you airborne at typical weight and flex without scraping the tail off.

I am very much in favour of manual flying. And I encourage all my F/O's to hand-fly as much as they want to under not too busy conditions.
My basic conviction is that any linepilot should be ABLE to fly a raw-data approach with manual thrust down to minimums at the operating limitation (xwind) of the a/c.
Would it be wise to this actually? Big No!! But you have to be ready to do it one day when things quit and raw data is the only thing left! So what better opportunity than to practice rawdata flying when the weather is nice with all the systems working normally?? It is your professional obligation to maintain and/or improve your manual skills! (also it is more fun and gives you more job satisfaction) And you know what you'd do when you become overloaded? Just connect the automatics again!! Win-win situation, risk-free!

I had an F/O one day telling me he would like to do some manual flying. Then at 1000ft RA with the AP still in I asked him about the manual flying. So he replied that it would not be wise to take the AP out now, as the landing clearance was not received yet!! In case of G/A blablablabla Hahaha. It makes me laugh, but cry at the same time. I've also flown with F/O's who were hesitant to accept a visual approach approach in CAVOK, no terrain and opted for the full procedural ILS as they were not confident; not having done any visual approach since line-training!! Ridiculous! A visual approach is a normal procedure in the SOP and it saves a lot of fuel and time!!

I hate to bash one specific country. But most if not all of the problems are with pilots from a specific Island. Pilots from continental Europe tend to be much more hands-on and less worried about liability and risk mitigation and actually like to fly the a/c!!

O.D.

12,5° or 10°?
 

Hi rudderrudderrat,

If don't feel the need to start an argument about a few degrees (or inches :E ) with you. So if 10° works for you, be my guest.

I know from more then 20 Pc's in the A320 that a smooth rotation to 12,5° works fine for me all the time, whatever the weight or flex. (I can't recall ever finding myself below V2 when airborne) I'm not sure that 10° pitch up will ever get me climbing away on one engine at MTOW at a 4000m rwy? So I'll stick to the exact procedure I can find in the FCTM.

I suggest we return to the topic.

Respectfully,
Sabenaboy

How is it possible that we must carry out a number of autolands every six months (in actual CAT II, III or for practice only) to stay current in LVO and we don't have to carry out a number of raw data ILS to minima "to stay current in flying"?

Is it more difficult to autoland than to land?

If the answer is yes, then it should not be a problem (even from the point of view of liability) to hand fly an approach.

If the answer is no, then hand flying should be practiced in the same way as autolands in order to make sure that flight crews remain competent at hand flying an approach to minima.