Wow!!! what a concept. Just think if management encouraged maintaining flying skills in the first place, this article would never have been printed.


I still a hands on line training captain. Pilots need to demonstrate their airmanship prior to being released to the line. I've been criticized and praised by both sides of the fence. I never wanted any of my students to be part of a new article ala Asiana.

And if you fly an aircraft that is capable of single engine autothrottle, and even single engine CAT 3B................... Even the sim ILS thrust is done for you!!

Used to do the odd flight with an a/thr inop in a previous life, and was confident.. Not so now!!

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I understand from company sources, Virgin Australia (737NG) leave the AT armed when flying manually on final approach but de-select the speed function. I understand that this was the technique used by the former Ansett Airlines of Australia on their Classics before the airline folded over a decade ago. Pilots of AAA who joined the then start up airline Virgin Blue brought that technique with them regardless of Boeing recommended philosophy. Qantas NG AT philosophy started off leaving AT armed for manual flying then reverted to Boeing recommended procedures of AT off when manually flying unless in climb after take off.

FLEXPOWER
What you said is only partly correct. The basic flying skill has two aspects acquiring it and maintaining it. This applies to all irrespective of experience. SFO accident was not caused by 200 hrs guys. So what was the problem did they lose the skill or never had it in the first place? I have seen even some of the experienced pilots have weak areas which are not addressed in the refreshers and keep getting worse. Here the airline and ethnic cultural issues may come in. I am not against practicing basic skills but if you have the ability it is not that difficult to retain it.

So is an unservicable A/T still allowed in the MEL? If pilots are not allowed to practice using manual thrust under any circumstance because of the danger it presents then an A/T should be considered a no-go item if it is U/S.

Seeing the accidents' statistic, it seems the problem of excess of SOP dependance is typically a civilian problem.

How do Military manage that modern piloting method schyzophreny ?

Is the aerobatics training a solution to maintain enough brain's independance ?

Are you using other methods to train ? (Perhaps military keep secrecy about their AF447 type LOC, or SFO type short landing ?)

Is it a problem of human factor inside airlines to destroy benefits of experience , and Unions strength in generation competition with the pretext of technoology ?

Quote:
Not in BA. Manual thrust handling forbidden on 777 and Airbus. Training dept say it is safer than letting the pilots manage!!

Sadly a legacy from the "good old Trident" with the non flying pilot holding the throttles. Demonstrated admirably by Manx at Cork a couple of years ago.
Fools never learn.
On a happier note met my first black BA pilot on thursday at the Caribean pilots exhibition at RAF museum Hendon...a bl@@dy long time coming.:ok:

I usually fly, with my hands and eyes, the first thirty minutes of about half of all my departures. Frequently, F/O expects that I'll put on the autopilot after we are cleaned up. I just keep using my eyes and hands all the way to FL and then some. This is really where the crosscheck is learned. At Mach0.84 a one degree pitch change produces an 840 foot vertical either up or down. So to keep it smooth one must learn how to do changes less than a quarter of a degree. There are times when the ATC load becomes busy and the A/P is connected. But when not I keep my hands and eyes trained.


One the way back down, I'm again on the eyes and hand below ten thousand.


The auto throttle issue comes to fuel burn. I have yet to see a manual throttle pilot beat the auto system. The savings maybe small but ten kilos of fuel saved each hour by a fleet of 40 aircraft save the company money.

Another reason Pilots of modern airliners are reluctant to practise manual flight is the data monitoring which sends a ping every time a company specified parameter is exceeded. This is especially prevalent in Asia where exceeding a parameter can result in a tea and bicky session followed by fines, demotion, loss of face and loss of a Job.
Being a good pilot that knows their limits through practice and past experience isn't important anymore. Being a cheap bum in the seat who can recite SOP's and push buttons is.

Dutch roll
 

I'm still waiting a "DUTCH ROLL" SOP to apply in case of degenerating yaw damper failure, or cable tension failure :mad: The latter happened on MD83, happily the captain was able to hand fly that problem.

In my previous company the disconnection of all automatics was actively encouraged. Crews often flew approaches fully manual. I personally have total disrespect of the A330 A/T in gusty conditions, and since gusty was common in that part of the world it made perfect sense to disconnect it.

In my current company it is only passively encouraged, and crews seem to prefer leave the automatics in. You rarely see the FO suggesting to do a manual approach.

Recently I did an approach where the AT was behaving abysmally (I had left it engaged since that's really the unspoken norm here). So, I did the obvious and disconnected it.
Afterward the FO whinged that I hadn't briefed him before the approach that I'd be disconnecting the AT.
The 'norms' and ' SOP's' are so firmly ingrained now that logic is out the window.

Lookleft, re: BA

It is on the 777..and I agree with your subsequent comments.

b.p.

:confused: Well FWIW "it's" been going on a bl@@dy long time, in fact some of us joined BA at the same time as a black Caribbean lady pilot in the late 80's......

I offer my F/Os 3 out of the 4 legs we may fly in a day. I encourage my F/Os to manually fly up to the mid 20s and disengage the A/P and deselect speed below FL150.


Many enjoy turning off the FDs too.

The airlines may have policies on automation but no one tells you to fly on autopilot unmonitored. All these incidents happened because pilots were not scanning. Aircrafts like A320 hold the flight path then what else is left to do? The N1 from level flight at green dot to descent on glide path does not vary by more than 15% and with trend arrow guiding you at all times it is not a great skill. Proper training and sincere refreshers should be able sort this out. Too much manual flying in congested air traffic environment can create its own problems.

People keep saying stuff like this, but really I don't see why manual flying would be particularly problematic. Looking at the ASRs at my place, it seems most screwups in busy ATC environments where because intended autopilot mode changes were not properly monitored and automatic mode changes were not noticed.

I would conclude that autopilot flying requires forced concentration and discipline, whereas manual flying imbibes such qualities. Therefore autopilot flying just a skill as manual flying is just a skill. Do enough manual flying and one wonders what all the fuss is about.

You might want to Google KC-135 Kyrgyzstan and see that the Air Force also has a problem with over reliance on automation. Due to flight control problems the aircraft developed Dutch Roll and it broke up in flight. The report suggested that the crew might have been able to recover the aircraft if they had taken manual control but they instead had attempted to engage the autopilot.

So its not just a civilian problem. It has a lot to do with reducing training to the absolute minimum and hoping that the only non-normals experienced by a crew fit neatly into the QRH and ECAM/EICAS.

If you are too lazy to operate the MCP while your FO wants to flay, just man up and tell them.

IMHO it is not a training problem, but a culture problem. The TQ & base training should create a solid foundation for GH skills. The culture of the airline then encourages, or not, the development and maintenance of those skills. Before EFIS my airline actively encouraged manual flying. The autopilot was so basic that it was easier to do so. The F/O had only CWS and no A/T anyway. Manual visual circuits was the norm so skills were high.
I then flew B757/767 with other airlines and manual flight, visual approaches into small quiet airfields was the norm.
Later airlines with the new wizz-bang computer a/c said, very quietly, that manual flight was allowed, but then actively discouraged it. All through the winter fully automated procedures had been used. In the first week of CAVOK summer there were too many Go-rounds from screwed up manual visuals, and that meant lost money & time, so very restrictive procedures were put in place that effectively shut that door. Use of automatics and LNAV/VNAV etc. meant that the very basic skills which had not been taught that well were now in the land of Dodo.
You can increase the legal training all you like; you can increase the minimum base training circuits all you like, but if the company doesn't like its pilots to use those techniques it ain't going to happen.

As an aside, here's a discussion topic.

The modern B737NG & A320 family can be flown on the automatics like a play station. Rotate, 400' and engage George all the way to 400' in front of the runway at the other end. Trained monkey stuff. Write an extensive set of SOP's and train & check them with a vengeance. You can now expand your airline anywhere and as fast as you like. Every pilot goes through the same sausage machine process and there are base captains and local trainers to enforce the SOP's. Head office can have confidence that even cadets can twiddle the correct knobs and buttons at the correct time with any captain they meet; the captain will be doing the same and it works for any airfield. 20-30 new a/c per year spread over many countries flown by pilots from multifarious backgrounds. You have a central control with local oversight. The a/c can be flown this way, and all airfields are also to a standard. An approach plate is an approach plate, and ILS's & radar are in abundance, in Europe.
Could the same rapid massive safe expansion have been possible in the 70's & 80's when the basic a/c were B732, B727 & DC-9's? Many airfields were non radar and NPA's. No way would you take cadets into that environment; they needed an airmanship grounding first. captains had >5000hrs and should be able to watch over the neewbies, who might be ex-QFI's, military, turbo-prop, airtaxi etc. They knew about manual flying and were comfortable in the air. It was not a play-station. The a/c had to be understood and they had to be flown. The charter guys flew to some very basic places, in all seasons and all weathers. SOP's were based on FCTM and the company culture, which was more pilot orientated than accountant, as today.
IMHO the massive safe expansion of LoCO's we've seen over the past 10 years could not have happened with the equipment of the 70's & 80's. However, and here is my curiosity, SWA DID expand rapidly and used B732 and basic B733 with a down-graded instrument display. It seemed successful. Perhaps those on the inside could enlighten us. But, does anyone believe RYR could have expanded from 25 - 300 a/c over 45 bases in 12 years if they still used B732's?

Thank you Lookleft for that worthful reference. It shows too that never described strong forces build a glued 3D net around the plane during developped dutch roll, not explained to pilots, AND not understood by classical aerodynamic rules who matters only about airflow very near of the plane.
It is how successive airfoils wristed around the plane and around oneanother with different AoAs.
Systems and autopilots ignore that modell, so "automation" (what I used to call "butterfly" from the fractal equations building lift and drag) cannot bring a good response to that degenerating system, if time delays and sensitivity of the FCS are too low (and too cheap, of course). A good handflying pilot with aerobatics training (fighter pilots) is better able to feel more quickly the limit of acceptable actions.

Developped dutch roll is the easiest PIO to overcome because degree of equations are the lowest, but that degree increases with bad reactions.

We know that PIO often develop in FBW rate limitation resulting from digitalizing vs analogic solutions like Concorde (Mc Ruer and others).

Automation is like a drug near the airports : folks buy houses near the airport because they are cheaper, and then complain about noise to get money. Airports ask greater precision in lateral path, airlines request more automation during departure and arrival.... There is no limit ! At some moment you get a safety saturation.