Hangry wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2019 6:12 am
This guy is the reason why real airline types roll their eyes at the "aviation experts" on TV. Your thoughts are as antiquated as an NDB.
Right. Apparently, in your view, so is flight safety. As I understand it, you are criticizing me for demonstrating competency in the use of hands and feet and maintaining control over needle, ball, airspeed, thrust and attitude.
But isn’t competency at the core of the issue here? If there ever was one thing I taught myself to do, it was to ensure that I was in control of the aircraft 100% of the time, even if that control was assisted by the use of automation. And to know how to disengage the automated systems when they did not perform as required.
To die by reason of overlooking basic principles of flight and to take 345 unfortunate victims to their death as well, while struggling to simply stop the aircraft from impacting the earth, doesn’t meet my expectation of competency.
So how does one maintain one’s competency in those critical factors of hands, feet, needle, ball, airspeed, thrust and attitude, if one continually cedes total control to the automatic processes at every instance? Especially if the automated systems override the controls even when the autopilot is not engaged?
It is an
airplane that you are operating. It operates on the basis of some very, very basic principles, regardless of the automation available to assist its performance.
How many minutes per year do
you actually fly? I say minutes, not hours, because with your suggestion, I’ll credit you with 30 seconds of control on the take-off roll, thirty seconds of climb-out before calling “Autopilot On” and two minutes of control inside the marker on approach, landing and roll-out, every second leg, perhaps six to ten legs per month. Three minutes of hands and feet, five times a month, 11 months a year. Total, 165 minutes.
Does that ensure competency? Less than three hours per year. The remaining time airborne is simply turning dials, programming the box and watching the airplane operate like a driverless car. Or sleeping in the bunk. Thousands of hours of time, of which less than 1% is actually "flying" the aircraft.
And you wonder why pilots have problems? First, understanding the reason for the aircraft’s behavior at time-sensitive, critical phases of flight, and second, taking the appropriate action to prevent the aircraft from committing hari kari (controlled flight into terrain).
Couple that lack of actual flying with pilots who have never flown a small aircraft—200-hour wonders like the F/O in the last accident, where all of his time was in either the simulator or the right seat of a $120 million aircraft, indeed, following Boeing’s recommended procedures—then look at the result. All the holes in the Swiss cheese line up.
Antiquated? What is antiquated about insisting on maintaining competency and maintaining control of the aircraft? I am still alive. Others, less antiquated, are not.