Originally Posted by vessbot

Not SOP, just the common practice. Fortunately, for all my complaints about the culture, our actual SOP is quite liberal. The only time autopilot is required is Cat II, RVSM, and PRM (if available.)

The good thing is that with SOP on your side, you can presume to do what you want, and let the other guy stop you only if he decides to. And if he's too stifling, you just do what he wants, finish out the trip, and the next one is a clean slate.

How much hand flying in training? Virtually none. I remember some steep turns, climbs, and descents in the first sim session, and then onward to all the box checking. Later on I think I had to do a total of 2 hand flown approaches, one normal and one on the standby gyro. Of course, AP can be on until level on the final approach course. Because it would be too hard otherwise, and you might need to try it a few times before checking the box. (As if your first success at a task should be enough to establish mastery, anyway!)

The only instruction about flying the plane I got was a rule of thumb about power setting on final (that's really pretty useless with the AP off) and a comment about the reverse thrust-pitch couple. Both of these being off the cuff technique tidbits from the instructor, and not a part of the curriculum.

Nothing about:

- power settings for other approach phases or flap settings
- pitch attitudes
- trim/attitude changes with flap changes

... And I'm supposed to walk out of that with the knowledge and confidence that I'm qualified to fly an approach to minimums. Yeah right.

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Since the beginning I've heard many times about how the biggest consistent problem our LCA's are seeing in trainees and on the line, is visual approaches. OK, I think. So what are they doing about it? Here's my window into what's being done about it. One time I fly a visual approach, where our gate for having the gear down is 1000 AGL. I lower the gear some time before that, meet all of our stabilization criteria, and the approach goes fine. Afterward, the CA says that he doesn't really care personally, but if I did that on a line check I would get tuned up because I didn't lower the gear 3-5 miles before the FAF, which is our ILS profile! So "backed up by the ILS" functionally just means "fly the ILS," and the company is evidently flogging people to fly the ILS when cleared for the visual, instead of simply looking at the runway and flying toward a point a few miles short of it... AKA, you know, flying a visual?

If this is the solution, the problem will only get worse.