Originally Posted by
METO Guido
The truth remains, they were weak. Or at the very least, unprepared. A component supplying critical fight data failed. With that went the aircraft's ability to adequately monitor & control itself. The flight crew, unable to "sort things out," rode her down 38,000 feet (16 degrees nose up) into the abyss. Aeroperu 603, hauntingly similar, something we've chewed over more than 20 years. Asiana 214, right into a sea wall, day VFR, due to, what do you even call that? These machines are, highly automated. They are not, fail safe. If you're saying we need to better incorporate training for descending the ladder of automation , fine, I agree. Fly the airplane, hard to argue with that.
Agreed. Here is the challenge though: Most of us on here, especially if we were military trained on the T6/T44/T37 built the foundation of our training without automation. Law of primacy takes over and we can instinctly use basic pitch and power to fix the situation without the autopilot. In Europe and Asia, many of these Cadet programs train directly to automated/ glass cockpit airliners.
The solution is somewhere in between: without forgoing the basic hand flying pitch/power (and rudder) skills, address stalls and unusual situations in automation/ glass cockpits. One of the best demos I had while training on the king air involved my instructor having me put the autopilot into a left hand hold, had me close my eyes and when I opened them the airspeed was right above stall. Was I to instinctively add power and put it in a spin? Or was I to just relax the wings and lower the nose. We need these outside the box training scenarios perhaps building on accidents from the past. Perhaps 777 training should involve correcting a low airspeed/below glidepath situation going into SFO for example?