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???
I'm curious if you have ever hand flown in the higher flight levels for an extended period of time? The CRJ doesn't trim out that well. Not sure how other planes do, but I would guess they would be similar at high altitudes. I'm willing to bet this flight was the last leg of a 13:29 duty day.