Originally Posted by
vessbot
"Off at 100 every time" was mentioned earlier, with a sneering tone, as lazy and skillless, but the "off at 1000" common here is basically the same. You take the plane fully configured with final power set, in trim, on the GS and localizer, with no flying left to do other than minor corrections to maintain the profile (likely with the FD on, anyway). This is what I see the vast majority of the time (from both seats), including on "visuals" on the clearest and calmest of days.
How often (and with what comfort) do you see people do things like:
- Level off at, and maintain, an altitude
- intercept a course
- change speed
- change flap setting
It's an interesting day when the things we did with barely 3 digits in our logbooks, to earn our instrument ratings (presumably, just the basic foundation to progress on later) are viewed as pretending to be Chuck Yeager. At the schoolhouse it's "don't be a hero" when you try to do anything outside the box-checking, yet they'll be perfectly happy to dispatch you in a plane with the AP deferred and where you'll be in those situations, for the first time, by yourself, in real life.
As a guy who instructed those triple digit pilots and spoon fed them as FOs I'm good not idealizing the skill level they never really had. I think we all had fond memories of days where there was no autopilot but it was a lot cuter when they were good flying turboprop and we'd yaw damp on after takeoff and never turn the autopilot on from MEM to MLU or TUP because only sissys use the autopilot. You're RJ pilots, you're not in the right airplane to pretend you're hard core. The 1900 didn't even have autopilot. I'd bet between the 172 - Navajo and the 1900 - Saab I did more hand flying in those first 4000 hours than you'll do in the next two decades.
It's great to want to hand fly and I hope you're doing it smoothly but, idk, quit and go fly a turboprop for a couple years. You're never gonna get what you want flying RJs.
And as a guy who didn't hand fly as much as the Detroit guys I had twice getting into weather where the auto wouldn't stay on for turb, shooting one or two approaches through that garbage to a missed or two and diverting both times. Never mind Autopilot deferrals where somehow me and the FO did just fine. Honestly, what I saw when I left was a bunch of pilots hand flying constantly and couldn't come up with good judgment in scenario based questions if I spoon fed them. Hand flying is good, but make sure you're reading your FOM at least as much as you read the web boards and practice alternate and MX decision making as much as you can.
Truth is, flying is the easy part. More than 90% of ya are fine.