Originally Posted by
1900luxuryliner
I'm not talking about machoism, or coolness, or manliness. I could not care less about that stuff. I'm not talking about extra time in the sim. All I'm saying is, in preparation for the possibility that the autopilot will fail, or the possibility of it being deferred, being able to hand fly it without worrying about safety being affected does not seem too unreasonable, or crazy, to me. Being able to fly an approach is not too crazy and unreasonable, to me. It doesn't matter if you are trained to do it in the sim, or not. It's called having the ability to fly the airplane in the IFR environment. How is that unreasonable???
We rarely do anything other than a straight-in precision or visual approach. Where do I get the opportunity to practice? MS Flight Sim? The company would be pretty bent if I started wasting time and gas to do full approaches for practice.
Could I do it in a pinch? Sure. But it might be prudent to take a pass if you have the option and there enough factors going against you.
It's just the reality of the flying we do, which is all different from the kind of flying you do.