Omniscient

Majority of aircraft we fly are fly by wire aircraft. The notion that we are maintaining proficiency by flying a fly by wire aircraft at altitude, its funny.

To me its sort of annoying when the guy im flying with wants to shut everything off. All im thinking now is "ok, my workload just went up, our chances of getting violated went up, and all because this guy thinks he is sharpening his skills by putting one dot on top of another dot."

So to your point of "things break, whats your plan"..Simple, it isnt hard. I accepted myself as more of a system manager in the Airbus vs what I was at the regionals. And if I happen to hop in a plane that has something deferred, its not a big deal. Still pretty simple, thats how its designed to be, and nothing I would worry about needing to maintain hand flying proficiency in

Duckdude

I’ve been an airline pilot for almost 21 years and I’ve never flown a fly-by-wire aircraft. And I have 4 type ratings.

Omniscient

Yes, sadly Boeing is a little late to the game. IMO. So yes, the term "majority" was probably an overreach.

And I fully admit that im biased towards Airbus.

Duckdude

I may give the bus a try next year. Curious what it’s like. I rarely hear anyone that has flown it for a while that doesn’t like it.

at6d

Going from the NG to the Classic I always had to take a minute to adjust my mental game!

It wasn’t that long ago that we did NDB approaches!

symbian simian

So when is the last time you manually set power on a level-off? You have power settings in the back of your head for when dispatching with N1-rated or AT INOP? I didn’t a few years ago when those happened, and now practice it. More than a few FOs have told me stories about captains not wanting them to do that, and one told me a story of the captain having a hard time keeping Vapp +/- 20kts with the AT off, on a calm clear day. It’s very easy if you’re current, not so much if not.

AOM 2 2.172.1:
, Crew Members may consider maintaining proficiency with this procedure when weather, workload, and other considerations permit.

If you keep the FD on while hand-flying (if that’s what you mean by keeping one dot on another) you’re right, pretty useless unless the FD is off too, and that does increase workload/chances of deviation. Still think it is a useful skill, and should be practiced when appropriate.

Omniscient

Your first question, last month. Seriously. That big ol yellow trend arrow sure does tell you a lot before you get to be where you don’t want to be.

And for every “I flew with this one captain who couldn’t....” there are just as many “this FO turned off the automation and....”. So I take all that with a grain of salt. I can recount various times that we got close to the RNP limits on a SID when someone was hand flying.

I don’t want this to be a back and forth on hand flying etc. But you and I know most hand flying is done in the climb, FDs on, up to 10k or 18k feet while the PM has an increased workload because of it. And you and I work at an Airbus shop so yes, there is nothing to be gained by this kind of “proficiency” and it only increase the opportunities for a violation.

And if the Captain doesn’t want the FO to take automation off, that’s well within their right. I have never done that, deny someone to fly within the AOM/FOM, but it’s within the Captain’s authority to request otherwise if they want. Sometimes you’ve seen enough already that trip to know that taking off automation would not be improving the safety margins.

Hossharris

Come fly the maddog. You’ll get plenty of practice ...

vessbot

I agree, people should also maintain proficiency by regularly hand flying raw data in the approach environment through descents, level-offs, assigned headings, speed changes, flap changes, course and glideslope intercepts, etc.

symbian simian

Personally don’t like the trend arrow for setting the power , but think it’s mostly useless trying to convince other people on here so stopping here.

Agree with the statistics, have no idea why people hand fly the whole SID with AT/FD on (useless from a skill perspective, but don’t feel it increases my work load that much) and then disconnect at 500 feet.

As for the “I flew “ story, I have flown with those FOs too, I was just relating what FOs have told me, and obviously they were flying with a captain, not suggesting one side of the cockpit better than the other.