Originally Posted by
hoserpilot
Handflying an rj is a piece of cake. Maybe if more of the current commuter pilots spent time as freight dogs and actually had some experience before getting their airline job things like this wouldn't happen. Learn to fly BEFORE becoming an airline pilot. I guess we can blame the industry for allowing low time, inexperienced pilots in the cockpit. .
I'm going to agree with this. Not going to comment on this case since I wasn't there and don't know all the factors behind the decision. I would not accept an airplane without an working a/p myself if I thought conditions were less than ideal (think DTW-LGA thunderstorms 13 hour duty day no FMS green FO expecting lots of holds and the like
). However I have accepted plenty where it is a beautiful VFR night with a 45 minute hop and the FO is all over me for accepting the airplane, and it is USUALLY the guys who got hired into an airline job with 300-800 hours who never had to hand fly any cross country legs on a high performance aircraft with no autopilot (or a crappy autopilot). Those that have think it's no big deal.
Funniest one was a guy who hand flew every leg one day, then whined that we swapped into a autopilot deferred bird for the last leg
