757 A/T failure

Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Because…. The autothrottles didn’t work?

We did that crap in RJs for years. Now a big ol 757/767 is too hard without George controlling the thrust levers?
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I’ve never flown with auto-throttles. I honestly don’t even like flight directors too much, since I feel they are fairly aggressive. Pilots should be able to fly without all that stuff. But it’s also nice to have, especially when operating in a degraded mental capacity (like outside normal circadian rhythms). In this instance my comment was less about their decisions, but more to say I’d rather us figure out this mess in SFO than plug along to JFK with a crew that was tired, inexperienced, indecisive, confused, or whatever else led to all this.

Personal perspective: It felt to me that the Captain was exhausted, mentally strained, and probably should have called in fatigued in SFO. But he didn’t want to disrupt the operation so he pressed on. Things started to unravel, so he was looking for someone else to say “go back, it’s ok.” He was looking for validation. Maybe the mistake wasn’t with this entire conversation, but instead was taking the flight in the first place?
 
FlyChicaga said:
I’ve never flown with auto-throttles. I honestly don’t even like flight directors too much, since I feel they are fairly aggressive. Pilots should be able to fly without all that stuff. But it’s also nice to have, especially when operating in a degraded mental capacity (like outside normal circadian rhythms). In this instance my comment was less about their decisions, but more to say I’d rather us figure out this mess in SFO than plug along to JFK with a crew that was tired, inexperienced, indecisive, confused, or whatever else led to all this.

Personal perspective: It felt to me that the Captain was exhausted, mentally strained, and probably should have called in fatigued in SFO. But he didn’t want to disrupt the operation so he pressed on. Things started to unravel, so he was looking for someone else to say “go back, it’s ok.” He was looking for validation. Maybe the mistake wasn’t with this entire conversation, but instead was taking the flight in the first place?
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Maybe. It just sounds like a mess.

How much mental toll/fatigue involved in their random circles in the sky, unnecessary calls to a flight officer to make a decision for him, a botched approach to a go around, then a second approach…. Versus just to continue a normal flight once they got everything back except authothrottle, to normal cruise, descent, and landing in JFK.
 
Sounds like the duty pilot was trying to tell him “you can’t declare fatigued right after you took off, we can’t write it up that way. So what I think you meant to say regarding the return, is X…”
 
Skåning said:
It's shocking, 1000 hours in the left seat and a grand total of zero FOs have turned the FD off. When I do it they fumble around and are taken aback. Kinda weird for a company that touts itself as having a lot of hand flyers.

At Virgin guys would turn the FD off all the time. Much more common.
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haha when I was first out of training, if anything got weird in the automation at all, I had those things turned off faster than my new puppy •s when I'm not looking. But that was mainly because I was uncomfortable with the automation since id never used such tricks before, and ironically, looking outside and doing normal pilot stuff was my crutch when I didn't understand the automation. I would categorize FDs as automation, even if they aren't autopilot, for the record. It's been a while since I've felt the need, but I definitely did this on my IOE "check ride". I think he was honestly too confused about how I'd gotten from where I started us (space shuttle high and fast) to hitting the 500' gate configured on speed and stable with engines spooled and the FDs off the whole time, to fail me. I've since learned some non-caveman skills. I'm pretty sure the passengers appreciate this.
 
Inverted said:
The FD on the 73 sucks elephant ballsack. I find myself almost ignoring them at times and letting the pitch bar come to my pitch attitude more than I pitch to them lol. Airbus FD was spot on and if you weren't in the center you turned them off.
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Yeah, on climb, that pitch bar is total garbage.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Second, I’m shocked Delta policy allows pilots to directly talk to MX in flight.
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That's something else that struck me....I feel like that ship sailed a long time ago (being able to call MX en-route for resets). Def a no-no at current shop, and I even feel like that was a thing at my regional back in the 2000's (maybe it changed while I was there).

My guess is the Swiss cheese didn't line up here.
 
Not sure of this CA’s experience but this is why it’s kind of important to maybe just hang out in the right seat for more than a year and learn the operation. Flying from the left seat isn’t hard. Sounds like this guy had issues “admining.” Good learning experience
 
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