Originally Posted by
GunshipGuy
I agree with most of that. I was just answering the question about when full automation was pushed, and my experience was though out my sim training and on my OE.
As for the increase on the PM, well, maybe it's different on the bus, but when I've had the pilot flying do that on the 88 and I have to do checklists, change his heading bug, slow his airspeed, make the radio call, configure the acft, back him up on level offs, update the box for the jerry rigged VNAV, make sure we clear out that last altitude with the descend direct, etc., well, it kept me busy at times 20 miles out from ATL where I would have liked to have more scan time and less heads down time. Maybe another 3000 hours and I'll have a better handle on things.
Exactly. Clicking it all off just to polish skills isn't always the best idea. 4 mile wide airways and +/- a few hundred feet all day are long, long gone. We're in the age of "hey no problem with us" from ATC and here comes an auto generated deviation for almost nothing. And nextgen isn't even here yet. There are times to click stuff off. Sometimes all of it, either for operational necessity or good old fashioned practice. But creating and then doubling the tunnel vision you just created while simultaneously increasing workload doesn't mesh well with the plus/minus nothing operating environment that's closing in around us. When it comes to the magic, sometimes more is less. The accident that kicked this discussion off in the first place could end up being a case of clicking everything off. A more assertive PM that said a lot more a lot sooner will save the day a million times more than a culture of hand flying just to hand fly.
I just hope we don't get barraged with memos and edicts from on high because of this, either way.