At the regionals/majors/legacies, are there some airlines that look down upon hand flying the aircraft rather than letting the A/P do all of the work? I was talking to a buddy of mine in the regionals and he was telling me that in their book, they want the A/P engaged by 600 feet and disconnected at minimums. Is this the case at most places or are there some places that allow pilots (Captains or First Officers) to actually hand fly the aircraft during departure and/or arrival?
That's insane, and it leads to people who are low total time or low time-in-type to really be overwhelmed sometimes when an occasion happens where they simply can't get the autopilot to do it and they have to hand fly.
If we're not doing lots and lots of level offs on the way up I usually hand fly to 15-20K, sometimes all the way up especially if we're light. I know exactly the people ATN_Pilot is referring to, ham fisted and making it unnecessarily uncomfortable for everyone. I think that anyone can fly just as smoothly as the autopilot though, and depending on the plane, smoother. I'd challenge anyone in the back to guess at what point I turned on the A/P!
On the way in it just depends on where we are and what's going on. If it's OVC005 and bumpy and driving rain and we're coming into, say, EWR where you're down low for nearly 20-30 minutes dropping down a thousand feet at a time, I'll leave it on until we see the runway.
On the contrary, I enjoy going into a small outstation when it's not busy and flying it all the way down from 10-20K. I like to turn the A/P and throttles off in the flight levels and keep the power and idle until we're at the final approach fix. It's fun to master the energy management of a plane after getting past the first few months in it, and as anyone on this board could attest, after a couple thousand hours on one type, you sort of need to keep challenging yourself in new ways.
I liked reading the discussion above about the throttles on/off when the A/P comes off. I'm in the Embraer but I do exactly what was mentioned above with the MD-11, that is, when I turn off the A/P I also turn of the throttles. I feel like they are battling against me with the pitch and they are a little reactive and don't know what your hand is doing with the yoke. I'd rather just do it myself smoothly than override them the whole time because it's less work, so off they go. I have also seen them go completely IDLE at 300-400 feet on approach, which doesn't even go along with the stable approach criteria in our books, which is why I just leave them off. I haven't landed with them on more than 3-4 times in four years, but only 10% on this plane seem to do that.
