Hand flying

blakman7

blakman7

Well-Known Member
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?
 
I hand fly the 767 to cruise a lot. Nobody seems to mind. I'm so rusty half the time that I need the practice. Autopilot comes off when I break out on an IAP, or if it's a nice day, 10-15 miles out. Not a big deal.
 
My airlines policy is to use the automation as much as possible. That said, it's totally up the the pilot. I usually hand fly to the mid-teen's and autopilot off at 500 agl on landing. Just a habit that works for me. I've seen guy's hand fly up to TOC and click it off at 10K on the way down. Some the other extreme but most guy hand fly more than me. The automation works well on my aircraft and I like the standardization of doing it the same way all the time.

The exception for me is slam dunk visual. I get uncomfortable with all the knob twirling and would rather just hand fly it and turn the FD off. I love my autothrottles, though, I don't think I've turned them off above the flare since I've been on the plane. Just no reason to.
 
Kind of depends what I'm flying. I'll hand fly our props and Lear to altitude, because the Flight Level Change/Speed Hold either sucks or is non-existent, and it's such a PITA to adjust vertical speed. Occasionally I'll get lazy in the Lear and run the autopilot in pitch mode in the climb. I'll hand fly the Challenger to at least FL180 before engaging the autopilot. It does such a wonderful job in Flight Level Change (speed hold) that I don't have to worry about making the passengers sick. The Hawker was horrible in FLC, and was somewhat a PITA to adjust the vertical speed command.

On the way down, I'll keep the autopilot on to about 5,000'. I can't explain it, but I feel more in tune with the energy management of the plane when I've got one hand on the yoke and one on the thrust levers. Allows me to make shorter approaches from the downwind when final is clear and ATC plays nice.
 
My regional airline strongly suggests the use of all available automation. But really the only time that its required is on a monitored and/or cat II approach.

I usually hand fly until there aren't going to be any significant turns, level offs, or speed changes. On the way in, it depends. If I'm tired, I let the autopilot bring me home. I will also hand fly any ILS approach with any significant crosswind at altitude. Watching our autopilot try to capture a localizer with anything above 15kts of crosswind is partially where I came up with my theory that our autopilot is actually a drunken gnome that lives in the avionics bay. All he has is a yoke and a PFD.

Like DE727UPS says though, on a visual approach it is usually easier to just click it off and fly the airplane than try to get it to do exactly what you want it to do with the knobs. Heck of a lot more fun too.
 
I usually hand fly it to 10,000 feet, then push on the AP. For visual approaches, click it off and fly that baby like a real airplane!
 
DE727UPS said:
The exception for me is slam dunk visual. I get uncomfortable with all the knob twirling and would rather just hand fly it and turn the FD off. I love my autothrottles, though, I don't think I've turned them off above the flare since I've been on the plane. Just no reason to.
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I'm not sure why, but my company taught us "autopilot off, autothrottles off." Works okay if you're new to the airplane and aren't used to the pitching moments when the autothrottles move quickly, but when you're comfortable with them? Heck yeah, I leave 'em on until 50' most times. They're great, and 99% of the time they're a big help at the end of a supplemental-type day.
 
Yeah, I guess on the MD11, you never leave the auto throttle on with the autopilot off. Guess it does weird stuff. On my (our) airplane it's an acceptable practice in the book and it's pretty rare to see a guy kick them off much above 100 feet. They do such a nice job of keeping you on speed and it's nice to know you can just hit the TOGA switch and the automation will still do it's thing if you have to go around. I have no problem overriding the autothrottle if it's gusty or it's not doing what I want. I'd rather keep it engaged and just do what I want need to with the thrust levers for a momentary deviation.

On a reject below 80 knots, we are supposed to kill the autothrottle. I always forget in the sim but I have my hand on the thrust levers and make them do what I want. I like the way Boeing designed the plane that it has great automation but it's easy for the pilot to override as well.
 
I think the pilot operates the controls 100 percent. It's just that some of the controls are buttons and knobs....hehe.
 
In the 1900 we didn't have autopilot, the Saab had it I used it sometimes every leg of every trip, sometimes I hand flew the whole time, sometimes I mixed it up. CRJ-900 now, we do RNAV departures which our FOM wants the auto on, regular DP it varies how much I care that day. Normally I don't care but if the captain isn't in the mood to keep up with the auto off NFP responsibilities I just call the auto on. A lot of guys are hard core about flying by hand and will do it under RVSM or RNAV, or if you are busy spinning the altitude up and haven't got to the heading because you're still answering the radio call with the other hand they'll go spin it on their own. Personally I feel like hand flying in a 121 environment is awesome but if your partner in crime doesn't want to do the correct FP or NFP stuff I'm not going to He-Man the control panel. I did single pilot in a number of planes, single high performance and multi's and so has most everyone else your flying with (not the 250 hour - RJ wonders obviously) so at this point I'm more interested in a perfect CRM/crew interaction experience.

What's probably more fun for me is being the NFP with the other guy flying. I love being busy, and I love monitoring everything while furiously spinning, typing, executing, talking, and responding.
 
DE727UPS said:
I think the pilot operates the controls 100 percent. It's just that some of the controls are buttons and knobs....hehe.
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Yeah. My strategy of educating the public is exactly this. When they say "so it just flies itself then?" I just start talking as long as possible using both of the large words I know repeatedly until they glaze over and wander off into the back.
 
We encourage proficiency in all three levels of automation (raw/FD/coupled). That being said, high levels of automation are recommended when dealing with complex SIDS/STARS that include VNAV profiles (in particular, "at or below" restrictions) and speed limit points. As others have stated, I feel that hand-flying visual approaches is easier than constantly adjusting the FMA.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
Yeah. My strategy of educating the public is exactly this. When they say "so it just flies itself then?" I just start talking as long as possible using both of the large words I know repeatedly until they glaze over and wander off into the back.
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I tell them I have an app for it, that's why I'm sitting in back.
 
My company encourages use of the automation as much as possible. Fine by me. I don't get the hand flying fetish. Seems for most guys it's more of a macho thing than anything else. I usually call for the AP after finished accelerating to 250, and then it rarely comes off until 300-500 ft on final approach.

There's nothing worse than riding in the back of an airplane when the guy flying up front wants to prove he's a tough guy and can hand fly up to altitude, and then proceeds to pull Gs for the first twenty minutes of the flight since he's incapable of flying smoothly. Ptich up, pitch down, pitch up, pitch down. Enough already! Turn on the autopilot, hotshot.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
There's nothing worse than riding in the back of an airplane when the guy flying up front wants to prove he's a tough guy and can hand fly up to altitude, and then proceeds to pull Gs for the first twenty minutes of the flight since he's incapable of flying smoothly. Ptich up, pitch down, pitch up, pitch down. Enough already! Turn on the autopilot, hotshot.
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No that's just the CRJ in speed mode

We used to be able to use pitch mode, it was sweet. At 10k double tap VS and hit turb. Then roll the VS knobby to 2.5* PU. 290/0.70 climb pretty much every time with a smooth transition from 250 to 290. I'm still upset they got rid of it.
 
wheelsup said:
No that's just the CRJ in speed mode
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Nah, I've got thousands of hours in that thing. I know how it behaves. I'm talking about gyrations a lot worse than that. I won't name the airline, but I was riding on someone recently, and it was downright scary how rough this guy was on the controls, and this was a Boeing, not an RJ. Most aren't as bad as he was, but far too many guys hand fly when they obviously aren't smooth enough to be doing it with people in back.

We used to be able to use pitch mode, it was sweet. At 10k double tap VS and hit turb. Then roll the VS knobby to 2.5* PU. 290/0.70 climb pretty much every time with a smooth transition from 250 to 290. I'm still upset they got rid of it.
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TURB mode does a pretty good job of keeping the gyrations down even in speed mode at speeds 290 or less. That's what I always used.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
My company encourages use of the automation as much as possible. Fine by me. I don't get the hand flying fetish. Seems for most guys it's more of a macho thing than anything else. I usually call for the AP after finished accelerating to 250, and then it rarely comes off until 300-500 ft on final approach.

There's nothing worse than riding in the back of an airplane when the guy flying up front wants to prove he's a tough guy and can hand fly up to altitude, and then proceeds to pull Gs for the first twenty minutes of the flight since he's incapable of flying smoothly. Ptich up, pitch down, pitch up, pitch down. Enough already! Turn on the autopilot, hotshot.
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Hand flying is an important thing to do when you barely stay current. Nothing macho about it. We have to be able to stay practiced and proficient when we don't fly dozens of legs per month.

By the way, if someone is incapable of flying smoothly while hand flying, it's simply poor airmanship, nothing more.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
TURB mode does a pretty good job of keeping the gyrations down even in speed mode at speeds 290 or less. That's what I always used.
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Even that turb mode is a joke. The CRJ automation is a piece of crap, they could learn a thing or two from the Saab.

IAS sucks, Mach slightly better, VS is half as worse, pitch mode actually feels like your in a airplane that is flying with a purpose rather than wandering around the attitude indicator with no intent other than making the people in the back sick.

We finally got cleared to use pitch mode and barely anyone uses it. Pitch mode is blissful.
 
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