Originally Posted by
aviatorhi
Yeah, for malfunctions, flying in mixed modes is just bad airmanship.
Know that saying everyone likes to throw around about the MEL? "Just because you can doesn't mean you should"... same thing here.
Even Airbus has come out and said that they are going to stress hand flying a whole bunch more than they were in the past. Slowly but surely common sense seems to be working its way back into the industry. Much to the chagrin of modern "aircraft managers".
Overall I agree, but that's not necessarily the case. On a VNAV (managed) to the feather ILS, I find it is far smoother to go into manual thrust on the bus. Fifi's thrust reaction going in and out of constraint captures can get quite behind if everything is coupled up.
I, too, am not a huge fan of the teaching of strictly following the FD when hand flying the bus with the AT on. I'm much more a proponent of teaching thrust mode awareness (make sure it's in SPEED/MACH) or particularly understanding the consequences of having THR IDLE in there.
In general, I do follow the both on or both off when on approach... on climb out when you're just in climb thrust with a hand full of captures, no biggie for mixing the AT on and AP off.