Airbus VS Boeing

[garfield]

hi,

If you want to fly manually, which one would you choose to fly?

[Joe Blow Schmo]

That’s kind of a random question. I’ve found both quite nice to fly manually.

[Lightchop]

Whatever pays better.

[Zaibatsu]

You won’t be flying either very much.

I don’t see what the big deal is.

Like others said whichever one pays more or offers a better lifestyle.

Though the 320 has a quieter, more comfortable, and less archaic cockpit than the 737. Beyond that it doesn’t matter much.

[ABU]

If you're not using automation except for the first and last 500ft, you may be doing it wrong. The passengers, airline and aircraft itself deserve the best and in my case at least that means letting the automation do its thing while we(humans) manage. Oh yeah, they hand fly fine low and get worse with altitude....physics and all that.

[squash junky]

I think the answer about the pay wins.
22 yrs in the left seat of a Boeing I think nr 1 is time off and nr 2 is pay.

[ant_321]

If you're not using automation except for the first and last 500ft, you may be doing it wrong. The passengers, airline and aircraft itself deserve the best and in my case at least that means letting the automation do its thing while we(humans) manage. Oh yeah, they hand fly fine low and get worse with altitude....physics and all that.

What if your airline requests that you hand fly from time to time? Including a full arrival when conditions and workload permit?

[ABU]

Dunno. Haven't worked for an airline that asks pilots to do that. Sim every 6 months usually covers enough failures that require hand flying I suppose. Particularly manual reversion from FL320 on down to the vicinity of the runway...so very close!

[Lightchop]

I think the answer about the pay wins.
22 yrs in the left seat of a Boeing I think nr 1 is time off and nr 2 is pay.

Yeah my other criteria would be lifestyle.

[Meatservo]

If you're not using automation except for the first and last 500ft, you may be doing it wrong. The passengers, airline and aircraft itself deserve the best and in my case at least that means letting the automation do its thing while we(humans) manage. Oh yeah, they hand fly fine low and get worse with altitude....physics and all that.

This attitude is becoming archaic. The passengers, airline and aircraft deserve to have a crew who are able to perform equally well under all levels of automation, from full to none. The presumption that your basic instrument flying skills remain intact with almost no practice is not only wrong, it's arrogant. Skilful and accurate situational awareness and aircraft control is a volatile skill. You try to justify not taking that seriously by talking about how the passengers deserve not to be subjected to your aircraft handling, when you're actually doing them a disservice by deliberately avoiding being at your best. Your attitude panders to those who profit from diminishing the importance of human beings in the cockpit. Full automation is their goal, and if pilots themselves are not willing to contribute to their own relevance, then it can't come soon enough. Cockpit automation was originally meant to augment the abilities of pilots with fully developed skills, in order to bring safety to a new level. Now, it just serves to preserve the status quo by acting as a crutch for underachievers.

[Lightchop]

I hand fly regularly. But I don't pretend like I'm better than the AP. I do it enough to stay proficient in case there is a situation where I need to hand fly. Usually it's because the AP is inop, but more often than not, the AP is flying.

[Bede]

Bang on Meatservo.

[Rooster69]

If you're not using automation except for the first and last 500ft, you may be doing it wrong. The passengers, airline and aircraft itself deserve the best and in my case at least that means letting the automation do its thing while we(humans) manage. Oh yeah, they hand fly fine low and get worse with altitude....physics and all that.

Really?

I can’t fathom how a professional pilot could come up with that statement. The pass3ngers, airline and aircraft deserve the best pilots, not some lazy knob turner who can’t be bothered to keep his flying skills sharp.

[ABU]

I'd sugest you may want to do the airline (Boeing or otherwise) job or even a single sim and then comment. I've yet to see any pilot on the 73 that can "hand fly" an arrival close to the automation, and why would one? But I am keen to hear how much automation, in your view, I should leave off next time.
And this is why most people don't provide insight or feedback to posts here. So many "experts".

[C.W.E.]

Meatservo has it right, automation will eventually do everything in the meantime pilots will become rare in the airline business as we get more and more automation slaves watching the machine fly.

[Zaibatsu]

But I am keen to hear how much automation, in your view, I should leave off next time.
And this is why most people don't provide insight or feedback to posts here. So many "experts".

Leave it all off.

That’s right. Flight director off. Altitude and speed bugs set to zero and heading bug set north. FMS cleaned of all altitude/slope/speed information. Heck, clear it of lateral stuff too. Moving map off. Let’s Richard Russell this mofo.

All you’re allowed is yoke/stick, rudder, and thrust levers... basic flight and engine instrumentation, and raw navigational data from an HSI, RMI, and DME readout running of traditional ground based navaids.

If it’s good enough for a Navajo, it’s good enough for you.

Those who fly high performance aircraft with automation are shaking their heads. They know that it’s nearly impossible to maintain an altitude in the high flight levels with an aft c of g plane. They know they can’t legally fly an arrival without a moving map or FMS. The cockpit workload increases massively. Now add a runway change or an emergency.

Those who fly a Beaver or something like it are asking what’s the big deal. Because they are clueless as to how much is involved in controlling a large and fast civil aircraft safely and efficiently. You don’t really need to calculate top of descent from 500’... or worry about speed restrictions... or planning your decent rate to arrive at the loc below the glide path.

[Meatservo]

You're right, that all sounds super hard. Of course, no-one is advocating illegal stuff like hand-flying in RVSM airspace, are they? Maybe just taking a visual approach away from the computers once in a while on a nice day, so you don't turn into some kind of joke who self-righteously tries to make his job sound harder than it really is, in order to ratify some inverted sense of pride in one's own lack of involvement.

If you think it's dangerous for you to physically handle the plane in benign conditions, or it's somehow more efficient and safer to fly a visual approach to land using the mode-control panel as an intermediary ambassador between yourself and actually having to interact with the machine, or if you actually think wasting fuel by flying twenty miles past the airport in order to perform an IFR approach under a clear blue sky is more safe than just joining a circuit, then I'm afraid I don't think I need to pay the part of my ticket that goes towards your salary.

I am quite aware that the truly huge airliners going to the truly overcongested airports are going to fly the published procedures, no matter what the weather is doing- and automation reduces workload to manageable levels during multiple changes in heading, speed and altitude, within a short amont of time. Only an idiot would fail to avail himself of the technology during these challenging scenarios. But somehow, that reality didn't stop the Asiana flight 214 crew from attempting-and failing- to fly a visual approach to land. Some of you probably think those guys are a laughing stock because they attempted to fly without automation. I think they're a laughing stock because they couldn't fucking fly.

[Rockie]

Correction regarding Asiana, they didn’t crash because they couldn’t fly without automation. They crashed because they didn’t understand the automation they had. If only automation in these airplanes was as simple as “On/Off” but it isn’t. It’s complex and requires skill and comprehensive knowledge to operate safely in all conditions and circumstances.

[atphat]

Meatservo flies “large jets”. Better listen to him.

[Meatservo]

OK. I capitulate. As soon as ATPHAT comes into a convo, I leave. ATPHAT you seem to have chosen me as your little enemy. You're right, I don't have the same kind of job you guys do. I used to fly a smaller, older type than you probably do and I didn't do scheduled operations. I no longer fly much anyway. I listen to my son's friends talking about their jobs at "Jazz", and like many older people, I am having trouble understanding why anyone would want a job like that, because my career was so exciting, and it's always difficult to remember that some people expect different things from their lives. The attitude you guys have sometimes towards automation seems more based on dogma than on your actual experience. I have been through several iterations of "modern thinking" when it comes to the pilot's place in the automation loop. I remember when I started flying there was a very popular attitude from the top down that the planes must be flown with the highest degree of automation possible, at all times. This is when I made the decision not to pursue a career with the "major" carriers, because it didn't fit with my (young) brain's idea of where I wanted to fit into the decision-making chain. Anyway, it was about ten years later that the famous "children of the magenta" speech made its way around, first in the States and then here, and I suppose this attitude began to percolate around, the most recent of which, it seems to me, would probably be Cheslea Sullenberger's speeches on the subject of pilot skills and experience. Now, probably following the latest improvement in automation technology, we are coming back around to the more automated way of percieving "safety"

I've noticed that attitudes from the pilot cadre at large seem to follow the rising and falling tide of pilot availability. Right now we are experiencing a huge upswing in hiring, and very low levels of pilot experience. I think management teams have always been happy with low levels of pilot experience, as long as the technology suppliers can keep providing ways to predictably and safely handle large aircraft on a network of predetermined routes, with a playbook of predetermined and pre-programmed procedures that take into account the vast majority of variables liable to require input from a crew of humans. During the "children of the magenta" era there was still a large pool of very experienced former military, and (the meaning of the term might be contested) "Bush" pilots available. Now, the pool is shrinking, the demand is growing, and the attitude concerning what constitutes "experience" and how relevant this "experience" is to the overall equation is changing. It's very hard for me to imagine what life is like for some of the very young people I know, who seem to be vacuumed up by regional airlines the very moment they've mastered, or sometimes before they've mastered, being able to consistently land a plane on the centreline, or many of the basic sills, and then enter a life where by and large they will be doing more or less the exact same thing every day, all the while being told they must avoid manual flight. I get phone calls from them six months later telling me they're being trained in the left seat, and it's hard for me to get my mind around that. It's difficult for me to give them the response they want, that I am proud of them or impressed. I do, out of politeness, but privately I wonder to myself what they really could have accomplished in that short amount of time.

I apologize for my often denigrating comments toward scheduled airline pilots. I don't know very many of you, and I suppose the fact that I have at times flown some of the same kinds of planes as you makes me feel qualified to comment when maybe I'm not. I don't, and never really did, fly the same kind of duty cycles you do, and when I have overnighters it's usually for one or two nights, in some interesting place or country, and then back for a long period of being able to come home every night. I know little of the pressures of having to do the same thing night after night, experiencing fatigue and not being able to go home for many nights in a row. The other thing I apologize for is that I am often bored when I sign in to "AvCanada" and often like to say things that I know will get people wound up.

When someone asks "is the Boeing or the Airbus more fun to fly manually", and someone's response is "you shouldn't ever fly them manually", it reminds me of the disappointment I felt early in my career, when I realized that "having fun" was only going to happen if one stuck to the outer fringes and avoided the spiffy uniforms and high paycheques of the front line. I will refrain from making comments in this subject from now on.