Rockie wrote: ↑Sat Apr 21, 2018 1:09 pm
Curious comment. Have you never done a visual? Ever clicked off the autopilot because what you were doing was far too dynamic to keep up with on the MCP? Ever gotten rid of the AP because...well...it's just easier? Ever got caught with your pants down around your ankles because you were a FMS drone instead of the person supposed to be in control? Ever scratched your head wondering what the airplane was doing when you not only should have known, but should have anticipated? Have you ever, even once in your career as a FMS drone, intervened in the FMS programming by using direct modes on the MCP or even hand flew.
Really, who's being disingenuous here, unless you really are the FMS drone you say you are (I like your self-description better than "Child of the Magenta", but they're the same thing). If that's the case you'd be doing everyone a favour by going back to bush flying.
Automation's real purpose is to make aircraft operation more efficient, not easier. It also allows safe operations in weather conditions unsuitable for hand flying and its necessary visual conditions. It is also very good at mindless level flight and following a predetermined track. It does not however fly the aircraft....that's what you're for.
I would say it's purpose is to make operations more efficient from the pilot perspective. It allows complex operations to be conducted with relative ease by the crew. It increases safety by performing the actual task and/or calculation at hand and, once all variables are input and confirmed to be correct, reduces the pilot to a monitoring role. This is ideal because it frees up the human computing power element that would otherwise be consumed with said monitoring as well as physically making the inputs required to correct deviations detected by the monitoring. Even if you consider the two distinct yet concomitant tasks (of monitoring and physically manipulating the controls to achieve a desired performance state) as equally taxing, which I personally do not, automation cuts the pilot workload by at least 50%. This makes it easier, there's just no way around it. Undoubtedly automation has it's own unique traps and pitfalls, but that does not equate to increased difficulty, only the requisite increased level of awareness of, and vigilance for those particular snares.
In response to your questions, yes. I have turned off all automation because I detected an error that I could not correct appropriately with the automation. It was due to an input error on my part. Fortunately, thanks to my previous experience it was detected quickly, and hand flying was no problem as I have a strong foundation therein. But the fact that that error occurred was not evidence that automation made the task more difficult. Suggesting that would be highly illogical and just plain incorrect. It's evidence of nothing more than the fact that certain unique errors can occur if the technology is used incorrectly.
Furthermore, I take umbrage with your assertion that hand flying requires visual conditions. As a pilot who has passed numerous IFR rides on aircraft with no automation, and successfully carried out numerous approaches to (near, or at) IMC minimums in those aircraft, VMC is not a prerequisite for hand flying. Although it often makes it easier, just like automation.
At the end of the day, I still don't understand why you would take it so personally that an internet stranger thinks that automation makes flying planes easier. I'm not diminishing the importance or responsibility of the job. I believe that is a constant across the board regardless of your aircraft equipment. I'm only suggesting that flying non-automated aircraft is more difficult than flying automated ones to the same standards, based on my experience. You've made it clear that you find flying highly automated aircraft very challenging, so I'd be curious to hear your experiences with non-automated, hand flown aircraft that was such a breeze by comparison. I can only imagine it must be quite different from mine.