when it comes to stick and rudder skills, we're all pretty much equal assuming we don't wash out of training. Good enough to pass an ATP ride is good enough to fly the line.
Stick and rudder skills aren't as priceless of a commodity as many pilots would like to believe.
I think you are taking the skills and knowledge needed for adequate execution of the job under normal circumstances (ergo, a 121 training program and/or an ATP checkride) and deriving two wholly false conclusions from that.
First off, yes, you are correct that for normal everyday operations, proficiency on an ATP checkride is sufficient to fly the line, and that no special stick and rudder skills are needed to babysit an FMS as it flies you through the National Airspace System and land the airplane safely after clicking off George.
That fact, however, is far from supporting your conclusions from that, that we're all equal in stick and rudder skills "assuming we don't wash out", or that stick-and-rudder is not a priceless for an aviator.
Your first statement is like saying that all humans with a college degree are intellectually equal. That's completely ridiculous by any stretch of the imagination -- that makes Stephen Hawking and I intellectual peers by that standard. An ATP checkride, or passing professional 121 training, is just
one standard of evaluation of
one set of flying maneuvers. ATP standards just happen to be the set of maneuvers and standards the FAA feels are
adequate for people to fly passengers around -- it is far from being some ultimate standard of all-around proficiency flying all types of aircraft under all sets of circumstances. There are many many other types of maneuvers and higher standards of precision to fly them to in the realm of all aviation, even if there's not an FAA checkride for them. Yes, Bob Hoover and I have both passed ATP checkrides, but does that mean that we are both equally good pilots? Hardly -- I'm lucky if I have 1/1000th of the airmanship and monkey skills of a guy like that.
Second, let's all remember that the purpose of pilots in a cockpit of a commercial aircraft -- especially one hauling people around -- is to handle things when stuff goes wrong. We know that things can go wrong in any multitude of ways, and although CRM skills are an aspect of being able to handle those emergencies (it's actually just a subset of individual airmanship, which is the
real skill needed, but I'll give you that it is an important component), it is equally important to have the stick-and-rudder skills necessary to fly the airplane when parts of the airplane are missing, on fire, malfunctioning, etc. CRM certainly
enabled Al Haynes and Denny Fitch to do what they did, but stick and rudder skills and plain ol' flying experience gave them the idea of steering the airplane with the throttles and the actual
ability to execute that plan; there is an enormous difference between the
actual skill and the
enabler or
facilitator for that skill.
By my measure, airmanship (ADM in the FAA vernacular) is
the priceless commodity for an aviator, but it is followed very closely by, and extremely closely related to, stick and rudder skill. The two, while being different mutually exclusive skills, work hand-in-hand to make an aviator what he is. Skill in one is to some extent worthless without skill in the other. It is possible to be a CRM ace, but if you can't hand fly the airplane when the chips are down, then what good is it. By the same token, you can be the biggest set of golden hands ever to grace the skies, but if you don't have the airmanship and judgment (and, by derivative, CRM skills) to make smart decisions about how you operate your aircraft, then what good is that, too? Hence that funny little quote, "A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that would require the use of his superior skills."
