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11-20-2013, 03:18 PM
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Amityville, NY
Posts: 128
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Question For Professional Pilots
A news report on TV this morning stated too many airline pilots are lacking in stick and rudder skills, which means they are relying on automation. Obviously you folks flying RV's do so because the flying characteristics "float your boat" and reward smooth use of controls.
The question is: In your opinion, do you agree with the news report?
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11-20-2013, 03:56 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Fredericksburg, TX
Posts: 662
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Believe the newscasters; they know everything!
I've been retired from the airline business for ten years so things might have changed somewhat, but I never noticed that when flying. However, many airline pilots would have a great deal if difficulty flying a light aircraft.
__________________
Jim Averett
RV-8
TS36 - Silver Wings
Fredericksburg, TX
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11-20-2013, 04:11 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 1,009
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Oh Yeah-But not Just Airline Pilots
With the proliferation of EFIS, Synthetic Vision, Full-Function Auto Pilots, etc., even low time home builders are flying more with their heads in the cockpit and relying on servos to fly their planes. Interestingly, while all of this gear has the ability to enhance situational awareness and offer assistance to the pilot, the accident statistics don't seem to indicate a positive contribution.
My Christmas wish is that all pilots just practice "flying".
Terry, CFI
RV9A N323TP
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11-20-2013, 04:29 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Utah
Posts: 8,151
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I had a dozen of riders in right seat who fly commercially or military on different levels. Almost all of them were able to land my RV9 safely on first try. Only once I hold my finger limiting the stick move in the flare. I disagree with TV people on this one.
PS How are you Tony? Long time no sea 
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11-20-2013, 04:52 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Aptos, CA (previously Reno, 21 years!)
Posts: 247
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What has brought all this to the lime light is the Asiana crash where a couple of guys with a lot of "flight time" but very little tactical sense flew a perfectly good 320 million dollar airplane with 300 people on board into the ground and crashed while frantically pushing buttons the whole time. This, even by the most automation dependent "weenie" out there, was a travesty and way out of the norm. But keep in mind there are cultural factors involved in that case that go well beyond "stick and rudder". Well beyond.
You have to understand something critically different about flying high performance jetliners across the globe, specifically the kinds that are advanced, highly efficient and quite large (heavy) machines. I don't mean 737 crews shuttling 4 legs a day, I'm talking long haul widebody jets like the Asiana 777. They start to become something critically different than "an airplane" at some point and more resemble a very expensive, complicated and highly risky business venture more than "an airplane". This is true in terms of how they fly with massive momentum and also in what environment they fly with guys getting 1 landing a month due to the nature of the schedules and also ramification of how the business culture reality plays into it.
Having said this, I will cut to the chase and say "yes" in so far as "some guys" have moved well too far to the right and are way too conservative and use the new style automation way too much. It can be argued still however that other flight operations out there have yet to master effective automation management skills and clearly have to "rely on basic flying skills" far too much to the detriment of their own operation. In another 10 years the automation lacking group may have moved into too much automation where the automation dependent group today may be well balanced tomorrow.
It has been preached for so long that automation saves fuel, saves workload, widens the situation awareness out of the pilots so much so that they can be proactive. This is true to a point, and everything is relative. But clearly the point of diminishing returns has passed us by with some groups. We always have to take each advance and each tool given to us in context and use relative strengths without enabling latent weaknesses to embed threats into the operation. Each airline and each fleet within an airline will lie somewhere on the spectrum of too little use of automation to too much use of automation.
In the early 1990's I was flying scheduled airline service up and down the east coast in turboprop airliners that did not have autopilots installed. Was I sharp? Sure, with stick and rudder. Was I efficient? Not as much as I could have been if I had an autopilot and a moving map with radar on it and GPS approaches. I flew very tactically and met threats as they were noticed. When I moved to small Boeing aircraft I hand flew a lot because I really enjoyed flying. I felt pretty comfortable about my abilities with raw data and automation. Now I fly heavy jetliners that can be very tricky to hand fly without a lot of planning and finesse without getting close to a speed, maneuver or comfort limit thanks to high weight, high momentum and efficient wings. But I have some really nice automation that allows me to fly way more strategically and avoid the need to be so tactical - I can avoid whole areas of threat and operate very efficiently. I still hand fly though, but it is tempered by more automation that captures every move I make through a flight safety innovation called "flight data analysis" or "flight operations quality assurance". It's a black box that records if I bust any standard operation profile, or buffer zones of any type; if so, it is recorded and I get to see the results pop up on tracking programs giving us our "operational health" reports. This alone is a reason some guys tend to use the autopilot more than they should - it's less risky as the autopilot can be a buffer. I still hand fly more than most, because I love to fly and hand flying is the cheap reward for putting up with all the rest of the managerial aspect of the job. When I fly little GA planes, I hand fly 100 percent of the time and don't want an autopilot on the airplane let alone anything looking like it turned on.
As far as some airline pilots not being able to fly little airplanes, we joke about it all the time but I've taken many experience autopilot jockeys out to fly little planes and they all get in and ride it like it's a bicycle even if they haven't flown a light propeller plane in 30 years. And yes they all remember how to use the rudder pedals too. Stick and rudder is the easiest part of the job that's why it's a tragedy when it's not as sharp as it should be because it can and will be deadly. No excuse for it.
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11-20-2013, 05:04 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Aptos, CA (previously Reno, 21 years!)
Posts: 247
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PS let me add that most "western" style pilots who were trained in small aircraft, having moved up to more capable machines, tend to "hand fly" better as hand flying is the language of flight to them - and ingrained within their very nature.
A big threat IMHO is the move toward the "virtual pilot" cadet who is trained from day one in a simulator to operate very complicated machines and to use the automation as a primary method of control. This is very "chic" in Europe today and has moved over to Asia as well.
Perhaps at some point this will not even be an argument as technology leap frogs again to the point where backup control or "manual flight" will be via a keyboard and mouse, or even more advanced links to human - control interfaces.
That will be a sad day. I'm an aviation blacksmith at heart I suppose. Very old fashioned.
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11-20-2013, 05:26 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Lake Havasu City AZ
Posts: 2,393
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Question
This topic really evolved from the Air France crash where the airplane was stalled at high altitude and remained in a stall all the way to the ocean.
There was an excellent article ion Sport Aviation a few months ago regarding basic flying skills. The final sentence was something like this- In this regard the lowly J3 Cub stands tall.
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11-20-2013, 05:29 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Pensacola, FL
Posts: 374
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I like where we are at
In my work aircraft we have what I feel is just about right. We have an Automatic Flight Control System, but it is not at all coupled (except for one regime). It will hold altitude, airspeed, and heading. It can trim the controls in any position, full throw. The coupled part is to a hover (we use it to get to a 70 ft hover over the water, especially helpful at night in low visibility).
This allows us what feels like a good balance between hand flying (we always are telling it what to hold using the controls vice inputting a number via knob or pushbutton) and automatically driving by itself.
Since we do not have GPS/ILS I see no reason for coupled autopilot.
All that being said, I do notice a difference between the new replacement pilots we are getting out of the pipeline that "grew up" with all glass vs us steam gauge guys...not all bad, just different. The new kids seem to be lacking some sort of innate SA that you get from an old 6 pack scan/analog vs digital gauge/something that us steam gauge guys have...BUT they seem much more adept at running(and, a key point, RETAINING) the complex layers of buttonology required to "fight" the mission systems in our military machines. Certainly flying at this level takes a back seat to running the mission systems. I am not saying it is less important, but you need to be good enough and with the help of automation systems be able to "let it fly" so you can operate all the radar/sonar/etc mission systems.
I feel it is an evolution, neither good nor bad (if you can afford sufficient layers of redundancy that you can outlive the MTBF)
__________________
RV-? in planning stages.
RV-14 #140050 SOLD
Permanently willing to contribute fuel for RV rides
Helicopter ATP/CFI(I)
ASEL/AMEL Commercial/Inst/CFI(I)
Aerobatic Instruction available
Atlanta based.
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11-20-2013, 05:50 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 52
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Short answer : yes
As a retired USN pilot and retired airline pilot I can state that yes there are some airline pilots who fly the autopilot well but have let their manual flying skills decay. A really sharp "manual" flyer can use the autopilot to increase his situational awareness and monitor more things. A pilot who uses the autopilot as a crutch will become overwhelmed when it quits on a dark and stormy night. Not to mention a pitching deck ... but I digress. "Sully" on CBS said it best this morning when he said it's an issue that needs to be addressed in training. Please don't read anything into my post - the majority of the pilots I flew with in my airline career were fine. A small percentage (maybe 1 per cent) fell into the "not so sharp" category. Not bad enough to kill me but sloppy enough to get my attention. I bet a lot of Captains said the same about me 
__________________
Steve Richmond/Corsicana, TX/RV8 Flying /FFI, Falcon Flight
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11-20-2013, 07:53 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: SF East Bay
Posts: 852
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I will both agree and disagree.
For quite a while now the emphasis in training has been to get the crews to use the automation. You are starting to see rumblings from our friends in ok city that perhaps that this is leading to a decrease in plain old flying skills.
As A6 noted, in the right hands automation can be a great tool to shed workload but there are some who are over reliant on the magic.
__________________
Sam
RV-8 with the Showplanes Fastback conversion
Emp completed except for glass work
Wings completed except for bottom skin and glass work
Fuselage underway
N18451 reserved
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