Originally Posted by
newKnow
If you look back 1000 pages or so, you will see that I was one of those who was up in arms about the flap non-call. I have since quieted down because as tsquare said I would, I got used (??) to it. But, every point Carl and Ferd are making still hold true and they seem to be making them in a professional, non-flaming manner.
For the record, I still think it's better to be accustomed to "hearing" and "seeing" triggers. Especially, for the flaps. I still get an uneasy feeling every time I takeoff from 3L in DTW. No one is perfect and the more safeguards we have, IMO, the better. No sour grapes. No whining. It looks like they are just trying to keep it real. Real safe ya know.
I agree with you. But you can go too far. You can over checklist something. You can make procedures so safe that the operation cannot function. An example is the now adopted NWA procedure of having to autoland a CAT II landing. So now if a Delta airplane is not autoland capable, we have to divert? While a 27 year old kid who has been in the left seat of an RJ for 3 months can come on in and land? Are our pilots incapable of hand flying a landing in CAT II conditions?
Delta is the top of the heap. People don't come here hoping to move onward and upward. We can and do attract the best, most experianced pilots out there. At some point you have to trust them to be professional and not over control them. By it's very nature, airline pilots are operating in a very unsupervised world. As someone else said, SOPA will not prevent a careless pilot from making a mistake.
That said, I do get tired of hearing complaints about Delta's way of doing things. To listen to guys like Carl,, you would think Delta has a plane falling out of the sky every month. But that's not the case. Delta has been operating safe airline for a long, long time. Both ways of operating have proven to be safe. So why would you not want to go with the method that is more flexible? Flights ops can always move toward a more structured way of operating, but they will never go back.
The powers that be have adopted NWA here, Delta there. Trust them to do their jobs. If you really want a say in the way things are done, become a line check airman, build some time in that role and maybe you can be a lead, then chief. Then you will have some input into the way we do business.
This is just an anonymous internet forum. I would take anything I read here with a grain of salt. If someone really wants to say something and be taken more seriously, at least go to the DALPA forum where you can't hide behind a screename.