Problem also is different airline cultures.
Delta apparently emphasizes hand flying raw data to keep the skills up.
Pinnacle used to.
Mesaba procedure basically calls for always having the flight director on, and in fact my buddies shudder in horror that we hand fly sans flight director over at cowboy air.
Further, the FAA is giving in to the worldwide erosion of hand flying by forcing RNAVs upon us. We now no longer have "4 NM either side of center", rather the tolerance is less than a 1/2 dot before the violation might spit out.
I would LOVE to be super proficient at all levels of automation, specifically the hand flying raw data, but everyone is trying to remove it from the equation.
In fairness, cowboy air is one of the nicer nick names.
Mesaba guys, including me, still have a lot of the old book in them that required certain levels of automation. Our group a lot of times just followed the book because it was easier (our book was half the size of the current one), and we still think we're doing that, and ignorance is bliss. The truth is, the new book is mostly the old Pinnacle book, and it makes no damn sense, so sometimes I give up trying to follow it to the letter because it's not like anyone follows it anyhow at this company. Honestly, after carefully reviewing the Endeavor FOM a year back, I'm pretty sure it's literally impossible to follow the book to the letter because it conflicts so often. I need a Letter of Interpretation from my POI on a couple day to day issues.
Wait before you respond I need a second. See while I'm overboosting the engines (because I know better), and resetting whatever breaker I please (because I know better), skipping half the standard calls because that screws up my raw data departure and I'm trying to fly this to F240 to stay sharp (because I know better), skipping the FMA calls because they are stupid (and they are, I agree, because I know better), complaining about rampies doing their job how they were taught (but I know better), I need to call up MX, DX, SOC, and crew scheduling because they are all complete idiots and I have to micro manage everything during the trip because
I know better and I'm the only one doing my job right! While I call up MX at SOC I will purposefully not communicate with DX because I know better, and those guys are idiots. Somewhere in this four day we'll find a way to gripe about the SLI too.
Yes, sometimes it feels like a cowboy operation because many (certainly not all, but a lot) of the captains I fly with have their own book they use. To them it makes perfect sense but it's tough on some of us who don't know all the secret code words that have become
(non)standard callouts
/separate
*my two cents, not directed at cencal, just to the superpilots who may be reading the other posts with cheerleading skirts on*
For all the "lazy" Mesaba pilots we had, some of whom found themselves in scenarios exactly matching other carriers who crashed and killed passengers and crew, we somehow managed to hand fly it out of trouble every
single time for 67 years. Maybe, just maybe, guys can unplug a little from being super pilot, let the automation do it's job, manage it from on top, and learn more about the automation. For all the bellyaching we do about the CRJ, hitting the TURB button fixes 1/3 of your problems, and PITCH mode fixes another 1/3, and the rest can be fixed using white needles to the OM like Mesaba USED to have guidance for. Before anyone says it, yes the automation kicks off when it gets bad, you better believe it, but when it's THAT bad ATC didn't call me up griping because I wasn't holding +/-50ft and +/-5knots. In fact, sometimes it gets so bad it's better to accept it's a bad day and DIVERT rather than playing hero and trying to get the approach in when the windshear alarm is going to give you the red eyebrow of death so soon as you hit 500ft to touch anyhow.
