Low altitude in a high performance commercial jet:15 minutes before you start to get tired. 30 minutes with a lot of practice. Beyond all of us start to suffer and a single moment of lack of attention ends in "oops". High altitude is a lot worse.

It's not about your skills that are going to save you, it's about the distraction that will kill you. Even the voice of a stewardess can change your attitude...

We've learned the hard way. The crashes happened also in the days when people thought they had skills. It's a required asset, not a bullet proof defense. The same should be said about knowledge and use automation.

I like that analogy and broadly agree.
I think you and I would probably agree on most things flying if we were having a beer at the pub. All I really wanted to put out there for consumption is that if you get in the habit of using modes other than TOGA to conduct a go-around,( as in the OP) be aware that in some circumstances you can get surprise terrain pull up warnings that wouldn’t have happened if you had done what both Boeing, and most likely your company, expected you to do. They told you to use a flat head, you chose to use a butter knife, now you’ve stripped the screw. It doesn’t matter that it worked beautifully the 49 times you did it before, they will still be a bit grumpy.

I do


​​​​​​​KISS

I'm sorry but I disagree. The kinds of crashes we have now are new; aircraft which could have been landed and weren’t, simply because the pilots weren’t up to it.

I used to posit, ‘how far do we expect the technology to let us down, and still reliably anticipate that the pilots will achieve a good outcome?’. The answer to that has shifted considerably of late. I think we may be wrong to celebrate Sully and Skiles as we do; their passengers were incredibly fortunate that they were rostered to fly them. If the industry had delivered for them the way it usually does, they’d have died. Conversely, imagine if we made Sully the minimum acceptable standard? Thousands would be alive who are now dead.

Only a few years ago, I operated a 737 for several days without an autopilot on 2-hour legs. My first airline, one of the UK’s largest at the time, had a fleet of five aircraft only one of which had a very basic autopilot, and that’s only 27 years ago. Refined manual flying skills are entirely possible, and to allege that good pilots can’t fly by hand for lengthy periods does disservice to the few left who can, and normalises the decline in professional standards against which some of us campaign.

I’ll leave this thought: if, when you are called upon to save the day, you can’t deliver, because you allowed yourself to be de-skilled, how on earth do you justify all the money you’ve been paid during your career?

Thank you. There is one exception, and that is the go-around with a very low level-off, such as at Nice (1,500ft), for which purpose the equipment is not fit, and where I briefed that I would activate TO/GA but use manual thrust and set about 70% N1, which always worked well in the sim (and the once I did it for real).

The money is justified if during your whole career you managed to stay away from that situation.

How on earth did you get into that situation is a much more important question than the simple struggle to survive and expect the pilot to be the hero of the day. Look at the statistics of aerobatic pilots. They have near perfect flying skills in their aircraft, refined to the perfection. Yet their mortality rates are huge compared to the rest of the pilots. They accept the risk as normal, as "controllable". And that idea is to be avoided at all cost in commercial aviation with passengers on board.

Now don't get me wrong, I fly manual monthly, weekly,... raw data. The people who fly with me are challenged to the bone. To learn the aircraft and create confidence. And it's not hard: give me an attitude and a thrust setting and I will let you fly. But I've also had youngsters in the sim who simply refused to use rudder trim because they wanted to show they can fly a full engine out climb-out without, an unacceptable situation off course. What is next: fly manual trim just to show we can handle it like a hero unlike the Ethiopian guys who crashed a 737 and therefore weren't justified to get any kind of salary during their whole career?

There is a balance that needs to be searched, and that balance is not based on flying skills, but on requested safety levels. We are not paid to be hero's that save the day. We are paid to avoid danger in the first place.

PS: Sully allowed luck in flying skills to happen because he had correct time critical decision making. Procedural he was top notch in that moment. It's a fantastic example of how technology (FBW) allowed him to free up the brain to make timely decisions. Just the simple fact the aircraft was trimmed automatically, compared to ie a B737 with a speedtrim that might activate on departure (which I fly) in that same situation is a fine example of how aircraft design and technology make the difference, and not flying skills.

And to get back on topic, I still can't believe he thought he could put it in CWS and let go of the yoke at low altitude...

Avoiding flying at all costs to include twisting yourself into a pretzel with a sudden flurry of button pushes (like in so many crashes) or invented procedures with autopilot modes not designed or intended for the task, indicates this to me.

Does it say he let go of the yoke?

No, fundamentally, no. That’s your bread and butter. You're not paid for the day-to-day grind of bread and butter, you're paid for the day you have to make beef wellington without a recipe, ingredients, or a kitchen. I’ll paraphrase Sully and hope for his forgiveness; he spoke of making many tiny deposits into his bank of ability followed by one enormous withdrawal, but I see too many ‘pilots’ who don’t even possess a paying-in book.

[QUOTE=BraceBrace;12056415]There is a balance that needs to be searched, and that balance is not based on flying skills, but on requested safety levels. We are not paid to be hero's that save the day. We are paid to avoid danger in the first place.[/QUOTE

Again, no. ‘Safety levels’ are an outcome, not an input. If, when you are called upon, your hands and feet, on your stick and rudder, can’t keep the small aluminium death tube from the crash scene, you’ve failed, and you have no right to call yourself an aviator (I make exceptions of course for those situations in which human intervention is insufficient to prevent catastrophe, and I do so with my friends Eric, Izzy, and their passengers, and those on board BND85N, and many others close to me in my thoughts).

Again and again, pilots who can’t fly kill themselves and their passengers. Sometimes there are degrees of extenuating circumstances, as in AF447, and there I apply the ‘scale of expertise’ test. I have no doubt Sully would have landed in Paris and written a defect up. I know that Dubois, Robert, and Bonin were passengers on the aircraft when it impacted; they weren’t in control. But they could have been, had their skills been adequate to the situation. Where are you on that scale, Brace Brace ? Where was I? Where are YOU, pilot reading this thread, and what have you done to move towards the Sully end of the scale TODAY?

I’m angry about this because I have left a professional practice which I ceased to recognise, to feel part of, because I watched it decline around me. And I've walked amongst the bodies of those it killed, and shaken the hands of their relatives, and thought very long and hard, and very expertly about, ‘why’…

Notwithstanding all the good, and not so good, stuff on this thread why is the captain, who is PF, arsing about with the MCP at low level instead of directing PM to make the desired selections? As per Boeing and, more than likely, his company SOPs. Pretty gash.

Because the autopilot is flying? Even if its CWS? That's not against SOP. Not gash at all.

Euh, it's totally against Boeing SOP. I think you might have to take a good look in the FCTM under CWS.

"... airplane may be maneuvered using CWS [...] modes by using the control wheel and column. Manual inputs by the pilot using CWS are the same as those for manual flight... "

It still is manual flight. PF should have his hand on the yoke and ask the PM to manipulate the MCP.

CWS is a useful mode but one which requires considerable thought and expertise. I used it most often for circling at NCE; I could set the aircraft up and fly it manually but it bought me time to refine my visual picture over my shoulder and on the EHSI or ND, it made small adjustments easy, and needed no button-pushing to enter the final turn etc.

It is NOT an AP mode in the modern sense. For the PF/PM relationship, it’s exactly the same as manual flight (though with the FD available as guidance, not an AP cue which the aircraft will follow).