Originally Posted by
Atlasvet
I understand most of your points and always felt the 777 program was doing fine. I only ever flew the 747 and believe there could be issues with some coming over.
But I am curious what you find disturbing about using a rubber band on the INT switch, I always found it handy if you wanted to chat.
The entire fleet has locking INT switches on the yoke. If the 1st OBS wants to chat all they need to do is lean forward and push the INT switches on their ACP. It can be a bit more challenging for the 2nd OBS depending on how that position is equipped on that tail#. Rubber bands, besides not being approved by the manufacturer, start a path down the slippery slope of non-compliance. What seems like a small thing carries over to other behaviors to the point of normalization of deviance. If you wouldn’t do it with the FAA watching, you shouldn’t do it in other daily line ops. It’s as simple as that.