Oh Qatar

[Baronman]

So you chase around a magenta flight director for 15 minutes while the autothrottles are in CLB, I don't think that really develops a skill.

Day VMC with FDs off and it's not too busy, knock yourself out. Just brief what you're gonna do first and dont load up the PM.

Have to agree....climbs with some level offs and turns is one thing.......Just pitching the nose up to the director with the engines at climb I think a 10hr student pilot could do with no problem. Doesn't do anything for my skills IMO.

 

[mikecweb]

Personally I consult the internet on when I should turn the autopilot on. It is truly shocking that Todd would take such a hard stance on something and isnt open to others views or experiences.

 

[Wardogg]

Qatar Airways flight 787 loses height after take off | Flightradar24 Blog

A Qatar Airways 787 quickly descended to 800 feet after taking off from Doha, before resuming its climb and safely flying to Copenhagen.

www.flightradar24.com

 

[charlie1017]

I admittedly have never flown the Bus. The most advanced airplane on my resume is the E190.

Ive flown both... Hand flying a Bus = 737 in CWS. Pretty much.

 

[GypsyPilot]

Personally I consult the internet on when I should turn the autopilot on. It is truly shocking that Todd would take such a hard stance on something and isnt open to others views or experiences.

Particularly since he hasn’t even flown professionally in YEARS. But here he is, arguing with active line pilots and LCAs/sim instructors.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

How many hours do you have in one?

5 years here and I gleefully agree with everything he says about the Nightmareliner

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Just stopping by to say the Guppy is a huge POS. K thx by

Let me guess, another Airbus involuntary transfer who can’t land a 737 good and still blames the lack of aural RA countdown.

 

[zmiller4]

Ahh, yes, the old “children of the magenta line” schtick. People seem to forget that Captain Vanderburgh, who coined that term in his AAMP course back in the 90s, was highly criticized by both Boeing and Douglas test pilots in the NTSB report for the AA 587 crash because of various things he taught in that course.

Agreed. I was shocked that an AMR airline was still showing those videos in training in 2005.

Is the increased risk significant? No. But neither would be shutting down an engine in flight for practice. Both are stupid ideas. There is never a valid reason to voluntarily increase risk unnecessarily with revenue passengers in back.

These two scenarios aren’t comparable at all.

Losing automation is a semi-regular occurrence. The increased risk of hand-flying occasionally for proficiency is minimal. And so the trade-off between increased safety through proficiency vs minimally elevated risk is a no-brainer.

Contrast that with an actual engine out, which I’d argue is an order of magnitude less common than automation loss and carries a significantly greater risk increase than…it would be insane to practice in a plane if there’s a sim available.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

None of these cases are instances of people needing to be better at hand flying. Not a single one.

Besides both F/O's pulling simultaneously on their side sticks, effectively canceling out each others inputs. The AP had turned itself off because of the iced over pitot tubes and the pilots were then hand flying AF 447. The plane then stalled because the angle of attack tolerances were exceeded (at one time up to 40 degrees) and the IAS dropped to a low of 274 kts. Then in an attempt to recover from the stall, the planes nose was excessively dipped and the AOA of 30 degrees.

Was stalling an airliner due in part to an excessive (over) reliance on automation? Due in part to (maybe) a loss of basic piloting skills (stick and rudder) and not being able to recognize the characteristics of a stall and stall recovery procedure? Which is what Zap is maybe trying to illustrate with the example of AF 447.

Also after said incident I believe the talk both here on the site and at airlines training departments in the states. Was a stronger emphasis on upset recovery and a return to more hand flying up front. Due to skills that had perhaps atrophied over time due to (over) reliance on automation in the cockpit.

 

[bimmerphile]

'anectoddally' adv. ( anək täddəlē )

: providing statistically bankrupt anecdotes about your experience and extrapolating them to everyone else, while ignoring more informed
opinions. usually accompanied by doubling down and telling everyone else they are stupid

 

[ZapBrannigan]

'anectoddally' adv. ( anək täddəlē )

: providing statistically bankrupt anecdotes about your experience and extrapolating them to everyone else, while ignoring more informed
opinions. usually accompanied by doubling down and telling everyone else they are stupid

That could really apply to both he and I.

 

[Wardogg]

Besides both F/O's pulling simultaneously on their side sticks, effectively canceling out each others inputs. The AP had turned itself off because of the iced over pitot tubes and the pilots were then hand flying AF 447. The plane then stalled because the angle of attack tolerances were exceeded (at one time up to 40 degrees) and the IAS dropped to a low of 274 kts. Then in an attempt to recover from the stall, the planes nose was excessively dipped and the AOA of 30 degrees.

Was stalling an airliner due in part to an excessive (over) reliance on automation? Due in part to (maybe) a loss of basic piloting skills (stick and rudder) and not being able to recognize the characteristics of a stall and stall recovery procedure? Which is what Zap is maybe trying to illustrate with the example of AF 447.

Also after said incident I believe the talk both here on the site and at airlines training departments in the states. Was a stronger emphasis on upset recovery and a return to more hand flying up front. Due to skills that had perhaps atrophied over time due to (over) reliance on automation in the cockpit.

Not that I agree with Todd at all in his current stance in this conversation, but I feel this was less "I don't know how to hand fly my airplane" and more "I can't interpret what I am seeing in my instruments."

 

[MikeD]

Not that I agree with Todd at all in his current stance in this conversation, but I feel this was less "I don't know how to hand fly my airplane" and more "I can't interpret what I am seeing in my instruments."

Have seen more than a few pilots who don’t have the hands or the SA to do a takeoff to a standard 1500 AGL traffic pattern and to a landing, with no AP, no AT, and no FD, and utilize the PM in the process. If one can’t fly an aircraft at the basic level, they have no business doing so at the advanced level. By the same token, if one can fly at the basic level great, but can’t grasp the advanced level, they don’t have any business flying said aircraft either. Need to know both. Be a pilot, and be a systems operator. Both are our job.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

Not that I agree with Todd at all in his current stance in this conversation, but I feel this was less "I don't know how to hand fly my airplane" and more "I can't interpret what I am seeing in my instruments."

Which is why I asked the question to Todd and the group. I always thought it was an over reliance on automation and a loss of stick and rudder skills that led to the crash. So when I saw @SlumTodd_Millionaire say it wasn't. I went to look it up on Wiki, because I don't have any actual experience and it seemed as if it was. But I wasn't sure and wanted clarification.

 

[Soku39]

Yeah, it is pretty hard to understand for folks coming from a civilian transport category background. It’s basically a big Cessna with a HUD, compared to airline planes. We have a barometric altitude hold function, you can couple to an enroute sequence of waypoints (to include RNAV post 2017), and we have autothrottles. We also have an attitude hold function which is similar in operation to 737 CWS (but all axis if commanded). No FD’s. We do have carrier based ILS guidance which looks identical to civilian land based ILS, and we have the automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) which you can fully couple to for an autoland at the ship, provided the ship’s gear and yours is working. I’ve never flown a coupled CVN approach, but i have used the guidance provided while hand flying. It’s just a different mentality of flying, probably for good reason.

We have a 249 count waypoint database, and have the ability (now) to load RNAV approaches to hand fly (to MDA). No LNAV or VNAV whatsoever. You just guess and do that pilot • if given a crossing restriction, an arc is flown like you would on a 6 pack plane with an HSI, and you will never hear a single one of us accept a STAR because we don’t have it, and it would take 20 mins to hand jam and we would never be speed or altitude protected.

Ha, you're making miss me the legacy herk, Q and T routes? Can't do it.

My favorite thing about the C-17 so far is burning a CD-R the day before with your best guess on the route so you don't have to handjam points.

military grade indeed.

 

[MikeD]

Ha, you're making miss me the legacy herk, Q and T routes? Can't do it.

My favorite thing about the C-17 so far is burning a CD-R the day before with your best guess on the route so you don't have to handjam points.

military grade indeed.

my A model A-10 had a 16 waypoint capacity INS back in my day. And HUD was recorded via a 3/4” tape cassette, and later an 8mm

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Not that I agree with Todd at all in his current stance in this conversation, but I feel this was less "I don't know how to hand fly my airplane" and more "I can't interpret what I am seeing in my instruments."

Well, no flying ever requires you to hold full back pressure on the side stick for minutes on end. Even on the Airbus, I could tell who regularly hand flew and who didn’t. The AP-only button pushers would almost always be the “stirring the pot” types. Annoying!

 

[Soku39]

my A model A-10 had a 16 waypoint capacity INS back in my day. And HUD was recorded via a 3/4” tape cassette, and later an 8mm

Ha, what was the G limit and was the cassette tape ribbon the limiting factor?

God the garbage that I've flown in the military.

 

[mikecweb]

Idk what kind of sims you all fly but i've never found one that flies like the actual airplane. If anything hand flying a simulator is way more of a pointless exercise than flying the airplane.
I draw this conclusion having spent time extensively flying each. Someone that spent 14 years paying for a job, flying a union desk, and occasionally hand flying for 37 seconds might come to a different conclusion of a simulator being somewhat representative of the actual airplane. But hey whatever turns you on.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

Well, no flying ever requires you to hold full back pressure on the side stick for minutes on end. Even on the Airbus, I could tell who regularly hand flew and who didn’t. The AP-only button pushers would almost always be the “stirring the pot” types. Annoying!

So do you feel that it was lack of hand flying and an over reliance on automation, or lack of SA that led to that crash. Or a combination of the two?