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Old 02-03-2010 | 10:41 AM
  #54  
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rickair7777
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From: Engines Turn or People Swim
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Originally Posted by 1900luxuryliner

Why are you guys not current on this? If your company has the ability to defer the autopilot system, it must occur to you that an autopilot deferal is a very realistic possibility that may pop up in daily line flying. That being the case, part of being a professional, to me, would include having the professional ability to deal with this situation. That would mean staying current on hand flying the aircraft, and even hand flying more complicated approaches. I'm not saying I'm better than RJ pilots, or cooler than RJ pilots, or have more skills than RJ pilots...I'm not, and I don't believe that at all. I'm just not understanding the justification for non-acceptance of this aircraft. I understand that it's the PIC's discretion; but, at the same time, part of our job, as professionals, is to be an effective part of the chain of providing efficient and reliable transportation to our customers. We can't be scared of flying things to mins, unless there is a reasonable justification for believing safety is affected. I'm not seeing the reasonable justification here...unless, like I say, he wasn't comfortable with hand flying the aircraft...which goes back to the whole professionalism thing...In the end, I'm just saying I'm not understanding this situation, perhaps, maybe, because I don't have the full story. No judgements; just questions. On the surface, it doesn't make sense to me. There may be much, much more to the story than what I'm seeing here, which may cause me to actually agree with this CA's decision.
How in the hell do I "stay current" on that kind of flying? Come in for some extra sim time on my days off? Nevermind, the company doesn't give out free sim time anyway. Our proficiency checks focus on managing the autopilot, not hand flying...we do one handflown ILS, with the FD, usually starting AFTER we are established on the LOC/GS.

In 6+ years and about 4000 hours of airline flying I have never had a deferred autopilot. At my company we are not allowed to handfly above FL200.

It's not about being manly here, it's about safety. For most RJ drivers the right answer is to not do a complex non-prec approach with multiple risk factors and no AP.
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