Preventing the loss of pure flying skills in jet transport aircraft.
 

During an informal discussion in the simulator crew room the subject arose on how to regain lost pure flying skills caused by years of automation dependency. Clearly, such are everyday ATC restrictions and company mandated procedures, it is a lost cause during line flying where full use of all automatics is invariably enforced and any transgressions quickly picked up by the QAR and the pilot carpeted and risks losing his job.

That leaves only the simulator. Again, time and costs limits its use for other than regulatory requirements unless the operator takes the enlightened view that there is a cost benefit to scheduling regular pure flying practice because there is a flight safety spin-off in the long run.

But what pure flying sequences give most handling benefits is open to individual opinion. Recently this contributor received a private request from a current airline pilot to hire a company jet transport simulator at own expense for an hour of personal handling practice in the hope of increasing his own self confidence in his ability to hand fly in IMC without having to fall back on the automatics.

Despite considerable experience on jet transports he was quietly concerned that he had lost the skill and ability to seamlessly switch from full automatic flying to basic pure flying skills should it be needed quickly.


Talking to other pilots over the years, this loss of confidence in one's own ability to get out of trouble by switching back to flying without flight directors and auto-throttles, is a lot more common than people might think. This often stems from initial simulator type rating training on todays jets where automatics are introduced from the first session and no time allotted to get the feel of flying the aircraft.

Horses for courses, but in another era the first thing we did before simulators were the go, was lots of circuits and touch and go landings. There were so many things to think about during circuits. Fast scanning of instruments, awareness of the runway environment in terms of circuit width, speed and altitude control, flap and gear selections and judgement of base and final inside the circuit area.

It could be argued that touch and go landings are unnecessary as they never happen in real life. That misses the whole point of the manoeuvre as a training aid. One FCTM states the primary objective of touch and go landings is approach and landing practice. It is not intended for landing roll and takeoff procedure training.

The object of circuit training in the simulator is to increase pilot skill and therefore his confidence in handling his aircraft in a quickly changing environment (the circuit). Half-an hour of circuits in the simulator has worked wonders for many pilots that I have seen.

Perhaps Pprune readers would like to chance their arm and add to the list of pure flying sequences that, given the opportunity, they would like to practice in order to be at one with their aircraft rather than being at one with the automatic pilot?

From my observations, apart from the value of tightly flown circuit work, basic IF/stick and rudder skills are honed maximally by exercises such as -

(a) initially: the old climbing and descending timed turns exercise, simultaneously from and to a heading, from and to an airspeed, and from and to an altitude

(b) subsequently: hand-flown, raw data, ILS in 0/0 conditions, progressively improving to a satisfactory landing and roll out. The simulator excels at this by sensible use of freeze and reposition. Not something that one is ever likely to do in anger .. but smartens up the scan rate and smooth handling like magic

(c) and raw data EFATO, progressively reducing to a min weight, min speed schedule at SL aft CG, with a requirement to track the opposite end localiser. Again, freeze and reposition permits maximum repetitive practice. The pilot who gets it all under control with a failure during the rotation flare usually goes off home at the end of the program with quite a (well deserved) swelled head ...

I have used the above three exercises, sprinkled throughout initial jet endorsements with both high and low time pilots .. in the great majority of cases, progress is fairly rapid and pleasing to watch from the back seat. The spin off to the other standard endorsement flying exercises is patently obvious to the back seater.

The automatics don't get a look in for this stuff ...




Clearly, the back seater has to be of a suitable personality to keep extraneous stress levels low in the front seat so that full concentration is on the exercise and no worry about the learning curve screw ups along the way and what the back seater might think of the pilot .. indeed, this back seater had little but high admiration for the hard work put in by the typical endorsement student.


... the end goal justifies the means ...

Perhaps PPRuNe readers would like add to the list of pure flying sequences they would like to practice in order to be at one with their aircraft.

When I had the opportunity to write a FFS TR course for B737 I started session 1 with this. Later, when having to teach someone else's TR syllabus with little manual flying included, I also used it for students who were having trouble with manoeuvres like raw data ILS and SE ILS & GA. Those whose scan was weak & slow and feel a bit agricultural.

No FD's.

* 5000' level 210kts.
* Accel 250kts then reduce 210kts and accel 250kts.
* level turns 25degrees BA through 90 degrees then reverse with no pause for 90 degrees.
* continue the turn & increase bank 45 for 180 degrees then reverse for 180 degrees.
* maintain turn & reduce 25BA and reduce speed 210kts for 120degrees then reverse and accel 250kts for 180 degrees.
* Climb 1000' at 1000fpm 25BA 90 degrees.
* level off maintain 25BA for 90 degrees.
* reverse turn 25BA and descend 1000' at 1000fpm for 180 degrees.
* reverse the turn 25BA and climb 1000' at 1000fpm.
* level off, maintain 25BA and reduce 210kts for 180 degrees.
* wings level. maintain HDG.
* radar vectors to a raw data ILS. IMC
* allow descend for +/- 2500 - 3000'.
* Call a GA at 200' with MAA at 3000'.
* Clean up and level off.

I call this aerial ballet. The a/c is always dynamic in hdg/speed/BA/ROC/ROD. Not only does it develop feel it develops and increases scan speed. It also educates the students WHERE to look for the information. If they've come from non-glass cockpit or EFIS the FBS phase on autopilot does not develop a scan. Suddenly, in FFS, they are expected to have a scan in a totally different instrument layout and perhaps many months since their last flying lessons. Their instrument scanning is already only minimum experience and needs developing step by step to help confidence.
I'd spent years on needles & dials. It took me much practice to feel confident with an EFIS scan. I had the feel for a jet and knew power/att settings. I had lots of spare capacity to learn a new cockpit. The cadets do not and IMHO too much is expected of them too early without giving them the necessary tools to do the job.
The 'ballet' is a basic concept that can be adjusted, modified to suit. Follow it with no FD circuit training and importantly include some GA's, even 500' low level circuits. 1 hour at the beginning of FFS will reap rewards. It is also a great refresher for those who are not allowed to do it on a day to day basis.
The airlines I've been involved with are expanding so fast but do not have spare FFS time to allow their 1000's of pilots to have fun. They barely have enough sim time for all the mandatory stuff. It's sad the way some companies restrict and discourage the maintenance of basic skills on the line. If they do that it is perhaps indicative of their overall attitude to piloting skills. There is the root cause of the problem. In B732 I was not taught, extensively, in the sim how to fly manually. I was taught the basics, learnt the power/ATT numbers, developed an OK scan and then, importantly, practiced and improved on the line. It was demonstrated by captains and they encouraged to follow suit. The pilot based management demanded excellence in piloting skills and captain management.


Hey JT. I was writing mine as you were posting yours. Seems we come from the same school.

It is interesting that having done type ratings in the airline and corporate environment that the only establishment that did the sort of exercises suggested above was CAE on the Learjet. Sim 1 was bashing raw data circuits, and EFATOs (and the dreaded TR unsafe after V1) were practiced roughly as outlined above.

The airline training I have experienced by contrast is very much set pattern, box ticked.

My new airline have a policy allowing pilots to use the sims whenever they are not in use for self-directed practice, and as somebody moving on to long haul, I hope to try to get in once every month or so to bash through a bit of raw data circuits, approaches and failures.

A dogfight.

jw

Not sure who you are with but where I work they also have that scheme. However most guys these days are FTL'd out/to knackered and/or to busy to drag themselves out of bed/away from family life on a regular basis to do sims in their spare time . There also needs to be a qualified panel operator to run the box, so at our place it's not easy to organise on a regular and frequent basis.

As aside, just on the off chance it's relevant to your plans, I'll mention that there can be a problem ( again at least where I work) for pilots trying to get extra practise by volunteering as in stand-in P1/P2 on another pilots recurrent detail (e.g because the originally rostered pilot went sick). Some of those volunteers have suddenly found themselves in "jeopardy" because, volunteer or not, they've been involved in a check that has not gone as planned :oh:....

I'm certainly not disagreeing in principle with the sort of thing you're suggesting but with workload these days it should be done on the company's time, and with some clear ROE (pull the wings off - yes/no? full SOPs - yes/no? jeopardy- yes/no?......)

This is going to sound like a stupid idea, and yes there would be issues.....

However. Here goes.

In today's computer driven aircraft, it would be possible to "separate" the two sides of the cockpit from each other.

One side flies the aircraft for real.

The other side switches to a simulation/computer game mode.

During long sectors, pilots take turns on the computer game mode flying through random scenarios.

Yes there is no simulation of aircraft movement, but this is a relatively minor loss in airline flying.

Nobody loses their own time to practice.
Long Sectors get less boring.
Pilots get more hands on and experience of the bad stuff which thankfully is less and less common in the real world.


You would have to have a very robust system to get everybody playing together again.
Only certain low workload situations would allow it.
It would be difficult to stop the actual real world pilot from becoming distracted by the more interesting game sitting next to him.

Our company allows manually flying except for CAT II/CAT III and auto land approaches. Few take the opportunity to turn it off, especially the autothrottle's.

I simply don't recognise this at all from my own experience (although I have no doubt that is the case in some airlines/ cultures).

Our part A explicitly states that crew should take the opportunity to maintain their manual flying skills during normal line operations. I personally fly manually whenever appropriate (and for me "appropriate" is not just CAVOK calm at a quiet airfield!), and encourage my FOs to do the same.

If for some reason it all goes wrong, we can always go around, and nobody in the FDM team will bat an eyelid.

Lucky man.

"Preventing the loss of pure flying skills"

That which has never been possessed can't be lost.

That which has never been possessed can't be lost.

Are you advocating that it is not necessary for airline pilots to have such skills? And therefore they should not be part of the training program in the transition from spam-cans to jet powered aluminium tubes? Surely any pilot in whom others trust should have pure flying skills to a minimum degree. That does not mean rock & roll inverted flight etc., but pure flying skills related to their application.
Tongue in cheek, if you wish.

Funny, RAT 5, I took it to mean that many (most?) of today's pilots just never acquired the manual skills that were standard 30 Yeats ago. One of those skills isn't just manual, hands on; but the ability to mentally draw a picture of where the plane is in space and where it needs to go, how to get it there.

Not demeaning JT's and your excercises, but the ND has taken away the skill of orientation.

but the ND has taken away the skill of orientation.

Interesting? I was brought up with needles & dials and a mathematical & scientific education. I played most sports. Perhaps all that gave me the ability to draw a picture in my mind of what the needles & dials were telling me. Equally I could navigate around London via the sun; knowing my start point, destination and having looked at a map before I left. I'd get myself into a small circle close to destination and ask questions.
Flying into Spain & some Greek islands B732 with nothing except a DME/NDB and a challenge not to spool up before 4nm kept the SA & orientation skills sharp. I could not believe it when I flew with a map & fix pages & distance to go etc. I found the amount of data made the job of mental SA so much easier; in 4 dimensions.
What I found in the sim and later on the line, sadly, is how little the F/O's looked at the ND. They were children of the magenta line with in LANV & VNAV. No mental x-check outside the PFD. It had to be a training thing first and a modern cultural thing afterwards. Laziness was allowed to develop uncorrected.
So I'm curious by your comment. It's not the ND that is at fault it is the way it is trained, or not. Raw data ILS being a classic case in point. I ask students, who came from a basic spam-can instrument panel, why they did not look at THE MAP? They had no answer even though they had a TomTom. It had not been stressed in introduction to the a/c. SOP's, checklists, QRH's and systems were the priority.
TRAINING is the root cause of so many modern faults.

Interesting observation RAT 5. The MAP mode has always meant little to me personally when flying an ILS raw data or otherwise. I already know exactly where I am on the approach without being distracted by seeing lots of extra information on the MAP that I simply don't need in order to fly an ILS within tolerances.

I have always liked a dirty big HSI presentation in front of me when flying any ILS in any aircraft so I can pick the slightest movement of the CDI and correct for the trend. On the other hand, the miniature localiser needle moving laterally in the tiny box under the PFD in the MAP mode, never grabs my attention - but then I am sure its a personal preference. But the lovely long CDI on the HSI mode makes me feel at home.

It is rather like those captains (checkies or normal garden variety) who get quite irritated if their co-pilot flies an instrument approach with the elbow rests up (not being used) and insist their second in command have the elbow rests down for more accurate flying. It is personal preference.

Tee eem,
Interesting thread indeed,some great observations and points being made.I have flown jet A/C for many years,the only way I've ever got close to getting those skills back was to buy an 85hp Taylorcraft,with the basic six pack,and spend days hand flying,short Cross country's and practicing approaches at various airports.

Flying for a major airline ,because of the obvious costs,will never allow you to regain those lost skills,impossible.The amount of information and "must-do" maneuvers associated with current training and check rides are geared to an automated system,not basic skills,and you can only do do much in a 4 hr session,and debrief every 6/9/12 month cycle.

We have introduced a "stall series" training session, prompted by the AirFrance accident.Not sure what to say about that,other than if you haven't figured out stall recognition and recovery by this stage,wtf are you flying this type of equipment for.We seem to gear our Sim sessions around current issues or problems.With the limited amount of time allowed basic flying skills get pushed to the wayside.More and frequent sim sessions cannot hurt,then again putting an 85 hp Taylorcraft through its paces never hurt either

Hi Judd: I mis-wrote. I meant to say the ND. The reason is observing the Track Line. Personally I fly raw data with APP Mode on ND. Dirty great big CDI with a track-line for extra measure. You see the LOC deviation displaced and the track-line tells you exactly how much to correct. Also the track-line tells you, in advance, IF the LOC is going to deviate. It's marvellous.
I see the students reacting to the LOC deviation on PFD other than being proactive using the track-line on ND. That is my observation. Even if they use MAP for an ILS the track-line is still their to give vital information. You just need to look at it. Back to training. If they haven't been told what/how to do then they do not it.

My theory of how we got here:

Just a few decades ago, automatics were unreliable enough that manual flying ability was something one needed to keep current on for good reason - 1 in 50, you could be handed an aircraft that needed to be 'handled' with no help from George, with his cousin McDoo barely able to keep an accurate track beyond 300nm without some learned, situationally aware input from time to time.

Now, in the world of synthesized digital 'perfection', there is the idea that we can train for a calculated percentage of possibilities by some MBA types to remain within the 'margin'.

The solution lies with re-establishing safety culture and the way there is through regulation and reward as you suggest, TM.

Regulation comes from the industry and government working in a (for a change) truly functional way, and reward coming from the industry in conjunction with an educated marketplace, the last of which might need some sort of fertilizer of a more refined nature than the blend currently being applied to the masses.

That leaves only the simulator. Again, time and costs limits its use for other than regulatory requirements unless the operator takes the enlightened view that there is a cost benefit to scheduling regular pure flying practice because there is a flight safety spin-off in the long run.

Are you suggesting 6 monthly base training. Unnecessary & impractical. From diverse experience of multiple employers, and reading comments on Prune during the numerous discussions about this problem, there is no doubt a huge variety in operators' philosophies. Until 10 years ago all my operators, including B732733/737/757/767 either encouraged manual flight = approaches, or did not discourage it and left it to crews' own choice. More recently the opposite was true, aggressively. It was claimed to be a safety consideration. The observation was that the better the weather the more GA's were made due 'unstable at landing gate'. What a surprise as on line practice was not encouraged.
We hear there are airlines who encourage basic piloting skills and allow their use daily on line. Is their safety record any worse than the straight-jacket operators? I don't think so. It has become so bad that some operators, while allowing visual approaches, insist on an LNAV/VNAV construction and prefer use of automatics to guide the a/c to a medium finals. OMG! These airlines should not be allowed to advertise for 'pilots wanted'; rather wealthy trained monkeys. It is contrary to correct advertising practices and not in the interest of pilot welfare. It is an abuse to our profession.

50 + hours/ year of private SE flying. Tailwheel, SP Ifr, crosswinds, night approaches to black hole aerodromes, short runways & circling approaches combined give confidence in any manual handling required in an airline environment. Now if I could only get my employer to directly sponsor it.

Karunch

Years back when our rosters were "lighter" and aviation/cost of living in general in the SE UK wasnt quite so expensive as it is now a lot of my more senior colleagues did exactly what you describe (well it was that or sail the yacht :ooh:).... Nowadays it's quite rare to come across anyone who does much if any SE flying ( aside from a few part timers).

As you say, if such flying is valuable then it needs the employers and regulators to buy into it.... what chance that!

Base training? Do you mean in the real aeroplane? Where was that suggested in the discussion? The suggestions are all about additional emphasis on non-automatics practical handling practice during simulator training

crosswinds = LBA, BHX, AMS (often) etc.
night approaches to black hole aerodromes,= Corfu (Southerly) Thessaloniki, Kos, etc.
short runways & circling approaches= Calvi, Corfu, Samos, Kos (southerly), CIA, etc.

combined give confidence in any manual handling required in an airline environment.
Now if I could only get my employer to directly sponsor it.

In my past life it was called line flying everyday.

I went skiing at Innsbruck in March, is it a hard airport to land at? my arse was twitching like a rabbits nose in the terminal building too.

During recurrent simulator training in the 737 Classic, the initial task was to give crews practice at 30 knot crosswind component landings in fine weather. Unlimited visibility and steady non-gusting crosswind component. In other word basic crosswind handling skills. The objective was to touch down with zero drift. In almost every case pilots were touching down with 10-12 degrees of drift still applied because of slow application of rudder to align the aircraft with the centre-line. It took about five approach and landings for each pilot (captains and copilots) to get it right and avoid landing sideways each time. This was on a dry runway.

For some, they were happy to landing with excessive drift still applied claiming the 737 was up to it. The true answer was they did not have the basic handling ability possibly because of lack of opportunity to get crosswind landings. Either the captain always did the crosswind landing because he didn't trust his F/O to land it safely without squealing of tortured tyres. Or the co-pilot was restricted by company regulations to a maximum crosswind of 15 knots or something like that.

This surely is where proper simulator training comes into its own especially as crosswind landings take real skill to attain perfection.

Part of the problem is the way avionics are made. Boeing and Airbus doesn't have an HSI mode which supports FMS navigation, so once you're given direct to some fix, you've got to have the FD on. In my old airplane, the FMS could drive the CDI, and it was not unusual to hand fly an RNAV SID/STAR or approach. The only time you really get to practice hand flying without the FD nowadays, is while you're getting vectored, or on an approach. At least once a week, I try and turn off the FD/AT and do the approach raw data. Day/night/VMC/IMC shouldn't matter.

At least once a week, I try and turn off the FD/AT and do the approach raw data. Day/night/VMC/IMC shouldn't matter.

Lucky man. There are TM airlines where this is forbidden; and yes, it does say in their Ops Manual that manual flying is allowed in suitable circumstances. Say one thing do another.

Just from reading pprune, it seems that your manuals say when manual flying is allowed, and ours will say when the AP is required. On the surface, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but to me, it suggests a fundamentally different philosophy.

It depends i guess, on the 737 Classic we had an HSI mode that supported FMS navigation, and even on the 737NG with performance navigation scales it is absolutely no problem to fly RNAV without the use of a flight director. On the bus it is not that easy, but the A320 avionics are a good generation behind the current NG ones.

Even without an FMS-slaved HSI you can fly direct to a waypoint by flying the track shown on the ND, which is how I do it if I want to fly raw data. Only had one embarrassing comment from ATC on the quality of my navigation... ;-)

The OP asks about 'pure' flying skills; I wonder if there is any such thing - manual flight without awareness, decision making, etc.
Also the fallacy that the use of automation 'causes' loss of skill, and that then 'causes' accidents. There is little evidence of either. Some accident reports cite loss of skill / loss of control, yet often overlook that the pilots had not understood the situation or had not been trained for such events.

Perhaps the discussion might consider:-
"Hand-eye skills (instrument scanning and manual control), if initially well learned, are reasonably well retained after prolonged use of automation.
Cognitive skills, such as navigation and failure recognition and diagnosis, are prone to forgetting and may depdend on the extent to which pilots follow along when automation is used to fly the aircraft." http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/56/8/1506.full.pdf

How can we sharpen- retain cognitive skills?

The thing that gets me in some airlines is their confusing attitude. Cadet selection process is raw data flying, and mini IR test. Base training is no FD flying to a pure visual with timing guidance to roll out on finals at 3nm. These are the skills required to join the lofty ranks of line pilots; well line training anyway. On the line these skills and attributes are forbidden. Autopilot, FD, auto throttle, LNAV/VNAV circuits, SOP's when to scratch your nose, etc. One wonders why use a selection process for a pilot and then create a trained monkey?
And then their Op's manual mentioned they encourage pilots to practice their skills when appropriate. Their XAA is having wooled pulled over their rose tinted glasses.

Seems a weird way to go about business, RAT5. Happily i never encountered that, the airlines i have flown in encouraged and still do encourage us to fly manually on the line. Raw data, or at least Flight Director off flight without autopilot and autothrust is a normal thing to do.

Now, it is very easy to get lazy and leave all that nice stuff in, and many do that. But those that want to fly the damn thing without all the trickery can certainly do so. On the 737 i flew at least 50% of all my approaches "raw data", usually out of something like FL200, something that was required since my first linetraining flight. On the bus i am so far kinda lazy and only fly a third of my approaches raw data, but i'm working on that.

Sometimes it seems on here that this "maximum use of automatics at all times" is an attitude mostly found in the anglo-saxon influenced world (probably not the US though) and asia. But i might be wrong there. Central Europe seems to be wired a bit differently.

Clearly i sit further back than you guys but if I might make an observation.

Modern automation has no doubt made flying 'easier' and less prone to individual pilot skill levels. Obverlla thats probably a good thing and has no doubt, through things like alpha protection, CATIII autoland prevented a significant number of accidents.
All this can easily be deduced by looking at overall accident statistics and how they have drastically reduced. Add savings on pilot training and recurrency training and theyare attractive prospects for corporate managements.

However we seem in the last year of two to have got to a point where the automatics safety factor is virtually taken for granted-it is not the improvement factor any more it is the new norm. As a consequence little publicity internally or externally appears to be given to situations where autoflight or simialr 'saves the day.

On the contrary side however among the much reducded number of accidents is a much increased number of accidents rseulting from situations that years ago just would never have happened, like stalling the plane which lets face it is pilotign 101.. The skills and airmanship with junior pilots learning on the job doing things like running round the Bovingdon hold for LHR in bad weather after an overnight from USA in a Conway engined 707 ,for instance meant that new FOs really did learn the hard way as part of the job because their was no alternative , no magenta line and this stuff happened on a daily basis

Move along to 2016 and no one has the opportunity to learn the 'hard way' because no one operates heavy underpowered jets with raw data on round guages . So when something unusual crops up those once vital skills in daily use are no longer there and we get events like the Colgan crash in Buffalo, Asiana at SFO and AF 447 .

The problem the pilot community have is balancing the two scenarios , do automatics save more lives than they cost as a result of degraded skills- and therefore save more money. You all know which choice your airline will make if the answer is yes. So how do you make a case for more manual flying in order to gain and keep current skills that may never be used or may one dark dirty night save a couple of hundred lives and a couple of hundred million dollars.

It would seem to me that someone (BALPA?IFALPA) needs to put together a proper analysis of recent accidents and make the case that in todays world the majority of accidents are caused no so much by pilot error as inadequate piloting and if that can clearly be shown then airlines and regulators do face a compulsion to do something since lawyers, media and insurers do not look kindly on people who overlook evident risks.

Anyway excuse me butting in, I have every sympathy with you as it is not just in the pilot world where this sort of thing happens, the number of times experience and judgement have been overturned by a spreadsheet or power point is beyond count in my (telecommunications) world but when something goes wrong in the middle of the night and they have to dig out aged Fred the engineer or young Jack the nerdy one who understands it all, these guys do have the luxury or time and safe environments to figure out the fix and maybe experiment a bit-you guys don't and people die as a result

Pax B: in many way you are correct. It is a cost/risk analysis situation. I am alway amazed at the reaction of authorities, & the public, to life taking events. A train smash, an a/c smash, a .....??????? Let us not let it happen again. Design it out. Enforce safety procedures; etc. etc. Then we hear, quietly, that there are so many XYZ deaths per year from problems in hospitals; there are so many deaths on the roads; there are so many deaths from foods; were are so many deaths from............
Reaction? not a lot because the publicity and shock value from the media is not there. 5 a/c crashes per year in one EU country is less than unnecessary hospital deaths and/or car deaths. Is there a cry of outrage for better driving standards or medical standards?
I'm with the 'better piloting skills' brigade because I was one. The managers/accountants/shareholder & the public? I wonder? Cynical, pessimistic, realistic. I'll let you decide.
Meanwhile the manufacturers are trying to design out the errors with more back-ups and fail-safe systems. Better pilots are not required because the a/c can not go wrong....go wrong....go wrong.....Ooops!

RAT 5

i agree with your comments - the point Iwas trying to make , as you allude to , is what happens when the automatics go wrong or mislead the crew , perhaps compounded by fatigue etc.

the challenge is to show that while overall automatics have brought great benefits in safety terms , an unintended consequence has put resulting poor basic flying skills right at the top of accident causes and as such it is negligent on the part of corporations to ignore it

Indelible in my mind is reading the accident report CVR where a Boeing 737 took off at night somewhere in the Middle East and the captain asked his first officer to engage the autopilot. I think the F/O replied along the lines "God Willing - autopilot engaged" But he had not engaged the autopilot because the captain still had pressure on the control wheel preventing the AP from engaging. All the F/O was apparently doing was reading back the captain's command to engage the AP.

Eventually the 737 wandered around the night sky in ever increasing angles of bank until it was in a seriously unusual attitude because no one was flying it. The absolutely horrifying part then started as the aircraft went into a steep spiral with the captain shouting desperately "Engage the Auto-pilot - engage the autopilot! Then oblivion...

That particular event and there are many others similar, if one cares to trawl through ICAO accident reports involving loss of control in IMC and that includes more recently, straight forward low altitude go arounds in IMC, demonstrates a fundamental flaw in recurrent simulator training starting from the first type rating.

That flaw is so easily fixed by company initiative in designing the simulator training syllabus to accent manual flying skills instead of button pressing ad nauseum. If the crew lack the ability to seamlessly switch from autopilot controlled flight to manually controlled flight without drama, then again this reflects adversely on their training in the simulator. I am sure every airline management work on the theory that accidents only happen to other operators so no need to worry about simulator training beyond regulatory box ticking.

As one Boeing Seattle 787 test pilot told a Boeing 787 simulator instructor "We designed the 787 around the basis it will be flown by incompetent pilots." What an indictment on the quality of some airline crews flying jet transports.

I wouldn't disagree but (as I think someone mentioned earlier) a lot of that button pressing is required by the regulator, and usually need to be done on a recurrent basis....autolands, emergency descent,, Hyd fail X, hyd fail Y, hyd fail X&Y...etc etc and some of it twice ( for both seats)...and then there's the "look at" that tricky new destination that might come on line...and the revision to some procedure Boeing/Airbus are coming up with..

I don't know how the trainers that write our "scripts" manage to squeeze everything into the sessions, but they do.

TBH unless some of the recurrent content goes or is reduced in frequency you're going to need more expensive sim time to allow for a meaningful amount of handling practise ( such scannexs, etc) every 6 months...

What are the chances of that?

'As one Boeing Seattle 787 test pilot told a Boeing 787 simulator instructor "We designed the 787 around the basis it will be flown by incompetent pilots." What an indictment on the quality of some airline crews flying jet transports. '



Sounds like complete nonsense to me, another made up story.



In fact Boeing has taken the opposite tack from AB who have tried
desperately to 'Pilot Proof' their aircraft by taking them out of the loop
as much as possible.



Boeing recognizes that Pilots should always have the final say as far as
control of the aircraft is concerned and you can't do that with hard limits.

Ironic, considering what you go on to write about Airbus and its design philosophy. I've never felt 'out of the loop' in 5000+ hours flying the 'bus.

You always have final say on Airbus FBW aircraft. The protections are merely there to ensure that in normal ops you will remain inside the normal envelope: they protect against poor piloting skills, of course, but not at the expense of removing the pilots from the loop. Difficulties arise when people don't understand the systems, but that is hardly an issue unique to Airbus aircraft.