Originally Posted by
vessbot
I just might yet, I've been thinking a lot about this over the last 2 years. I think there's a huge disconnect between the overall company philosophy of the pilots feeling easy and ready about flying, and what actually goes on in the training department and encouraged on the line every day.
Doing a few instrument approaches in a bugsmasher is quite a bit different than in a jet at twice the speeds and where every bit of pitch deviation gives twice the vertical speed. To think that doing a little bit of the former and coming in at 1500 hours prepares one to be comfortable or competent at the latter with no experience, is extremely naive to say the least.
If "most" of us did, why not keep up some practice here at 9E in the CRJ? In 2 years and 1000 hours, I've seen someone else fly an instrument approach literally maybe twice. And even on the nicest and calmest of VFR days into quiet out of the way airports, a handful of times. If everyone was such a "flying machine," I wouldn't be hearing them say things like "I'm gonna have to hand fly this one in!" or "Now I'm gonna have to do a descending turn!" in an elevated voice when we get vectored in too tight or whatever. That would make me rest a little easier when riding in the back.
I did a bit of freight dogging but it wasn't the Midwest winter experience, it was from the LA basin into the desert. After that I got a tiny bit more IFR experience flying charter up and down the West coast, .1 at a time through the marine layer. Here at 9E, extrapolating from what I see from the left seat, I would easily surmise that I hand fly the most out of the entire list, so I feel better about my own skills now; but I'll still refuse an airplane without an autopilot if we're going somewhere IMC (as I would hope that anybody would). Forgetting about me, a sample of 1, what about the rest of the group, the chief demographic being 1500 hour CFI's? Is everyone supposed to take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900 around? Or, instead, should the Endeavor training department ensure that their pilots can fly? (To be clear, this involves more than 2 approaches from the final approach course, with the FD, to tick a box in the training record and move on). What about senior Captains who I can only extrapolate have flown decades without flying a single instrument approach? Should they take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900? Or should they maybe practice their craft at least every now and then (even if they don't like flying) in the CRJ, an opportunity already available to them every day at their current employer?
Let's start with this:
- There are far more captains, including senior captains, who hand fly versus run 600-on-400-off. Maybe you haven't flown with the folks who turn the FD off and go raw data at 400 feet after departure, or the folks who stick it in pitch mode, because they understand the relationships among pitch, power, and airspeed.
- If you aren't watching folks hand-flying approaches often, then you aren't doing the ILS 4 at LaGuardia right.
- Refusing a plane without an autopilot just because IMC is involved? The FMC still works. Just fly the FD and keep an eye on the raw data. It works fine, even when in turbulence and/or dodging thunderstorms. Is it easy? Not always, but it's safe.
- It is *not* the training department's job to make sure one feels comfortable hand flying an airplane. It's their job to make sure that one is safe flying 121. It doesn't take a lot of observation of hand-flying to tell whether someone can or can't do it safely, regardless of comfort.