Originally Posted by
Airsupport
but if i am taking off or landing at an airport with marginal conditions i will turn on the autopilot at 600ft or keep it on if i am coming in to land. is it because i cant fly the departure/arrival, or the approach? no. it is common courtesy to the pilot monitoring. when things get busy the last thing i want the pm to do is be listening to me tell hime to bug headings, speeds, change modes for me, or any combination of the above.
so like i said it is common courtesy and a big help in the cockpit to be SMART and THINK about when would be a good time to go raw data and fly the plane around to when it is better to have the autopilot on. just think and be courtious to the guy you are flying with.
Bingo!
I typically hand-fly up through the mid-teens after takeoff, but then leave the autopilot on until I break out on an IAP. The biggest reason I wait so long on an approach is simply what you said: common courtesy. The PM is taking radio calls and concentrating on the approach as well. No need to unnecessarily ask that person to continually set things in for me when I could be lowering everyone's workload by letting the autopilot fly.
Also, it's just plain safe. While I'm perfectly capable of hand-flying an approach (as everyone qualified in the airplane should be), I recognize that there are 50 people sitting behind me who don't deserve to have pilots purposefully increasing their own workloads just to prove that they're hot sticks. I use every bit of automation available to me for that reason.