Originally Posted by aa73

The writing down of fuel between fixes is a VERY good thing. We've caught more than one severe fuel leak between 2 close fixes using this technique. Remember the A300's inaugural flight back in 1987 with the VP Flight, CA Ewell, as the captain? They caught a disastrous fuel leak between 2 close fixes thanks to this procedure. Almost had to ditch, but thanks to an EAL crew who told them to pull a fire handle, disaster was averted and they landed in Bermuda.

Otherwise, I agree with everything else you said. We do have a lot of long checklists, and the CA does a lot of stuff he shouldn't have to do. Hopefully this will change with a merger.

I will say that we have a highly skilled pilot group that still manages to fly safely amidst all of these antiquated procedures. 99.9% of the CAs actively set a very CRM-friendly cockpit atmosphere and recognize that most of our F/Os arehighly experienced as well.