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  • #31
    Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
    You guys are really funny. I finally retired last month so I don't have to deal with it anymore. I will be very content to fly my cub with NO RADIO, NO STARTER, and still manage to get her up and down in on piece.
    Congratulations. Enjoy your rapid decompression, so to speak.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
      You guys are really funny. I finally retired last month so I don't have to deal with it anymore. I will be very content to fly my cub with NO RADIO, NO STARTER, and still manage to get her up and down in on piece.[ATTACH=CONFIG]8184[/ATTACH]
      Dear Lord...an inherently unstable tail dragger. These must be banned and replaced by tricycle-gear aircraft!!!
      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
        You guys are really funny. I finally retired last month so I don't have to deal with it anymore. I will be very content to fly my cub with NO RADIO, NO STARTER, and still manage to get her up and down in on piece.[ATTACH=CONFIG]8184[/ATTACH]
        You can always install a battery-powered Aspen avionics PFD and HSI.
        .... or use the Mark IV eyeball natural horizon and navigator.

        --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
        --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

        Comment


        • #34
          Enjoy your retirement Bobby. How many hours in the end. Jet hours that is ?
          If it 'ain't broken........ Don't try to mend it !

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by brianw999 View Post
            Enjoy your retirement Bobby. How many hours in the end. Jet hours that is ?
            TT 25k Turbine 15k Tail wheel (The way real pilots learned to fly) 6k

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
              TT 25k Turbine 15k Tail wheel (The way real pilots learned to fly) 6k
              The day that you retired, another pilot joined an airline for the 1st time. Very young, about 20 years old, he spent the last 2 years preparing for this. 2 years ago, he had zero hours. 2 years ago, he had his 1st flight in a Cessna 172 equipped with a Garmin G-1000 PFD and ND, with a GNS GPS and navigator and autopilot. Flying more than 1 hour per day (weather permitting) in a sunny Miami airport, taking off and landing from long asphalt runways, dragging with power every approach to keep a 3-deg glideslope, always keeping white over red on the PAPI. 4 months later he had his PPL, 2 weeks later he got his twin endorsement in a Seminole (also equipped with a G-100o and AP), then he did his instruments rating and CPL flying mostly in the twin (he needs twin hours) and, 9 months after zero hours, with 500 flight hours, ha got his CFI. Next day he started flying as a CFI in the same institution ("flight school" is too small a name for this place), flying the same 2 planes he flew as a student, and has been doing so for the last 15 months and making barely any money at all, just a nominal and symbolic $ because he cannot do it for free (it would be illegal), but the basic idea is that you gain hours and the school has free instructors, instructors that don't have any motivation or passion for teaching, other than making hours towards a completely different goal. During those 15 months he interviewed with many airlines, those that fly regional jets under the regional brand of one of the 3 bigs. Those that you think you are flying American, United or Delta, when in fact you are not even flying their regional brand. One of them pre-contracted them. 3 months ago, with still fewer hours than needed for the ATP, he started ground school and sim training with that airline, in parallel with his flight instructor activities to gain the latest hours he needed. Yesterday he flew his hour number 1500. Today, 2 years after his first flight ever as a prospect PPL, he sits in the right seat of an ERJ with some 90 pax behind, and a captain next to him that is maybe 5 or 7 years older than himself and had a very similar path. He invested about 150 grands to get here. He will spend some years to recover that much, In the long run, it will be a good business though. He never flew a plane without tv screens as instrument and without at AP. He never will. He never wore other thing than a white shirt with epaulets while flying. He never will. He never flew in an uncontrolled airport with a grass or dirt strip. he never will. He flew 1500 hours in piston airplanes. He will never fly one hour again in another thing than a jet. The flight school he leaves behind has a fancy, important-sounding name, something like "PPCTP" that stands for Professional Pilot Career Training Program", but is known as a "puppy mill". The same day that this pilot seats in this right seat of an RJ for the first time, a 747 captain with 25K hours total, including 10K hours in pistons, which includes 6K hours in taildraggers, most of them without even a radio, a starter or even an electrical system at all, most of them in uncontrolled airports with a grass or dirt strip, leaves the left seat of his Jumbo airliner for the last time.

              How does it feel?

              --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
              --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                uHe never flew a plane without tv screens as instrument and without at AP. He never will. He never wore other thing than a white shirt with epaulets while flying. He never will. He never flew in an uncontrolled airport with a grass or dirt strip. he never will. He flew 1500 hours in piston airplanes. He will never fly one hour again in another thing than a jet.
                Why should he? The job has changed, and the less confused you are about it the better. The job is to fly a glass cockpit, to manage a digital autopilot, to use the magenta lines, to administer and troubleshoot complex, computerized avionics, to know everything about doing that without mistakenly thinking old world instincts can be universally applied. The basics will always be the basics. It the flight school isn't teaching them, then it's not a flight school and needs to be shut down. The supplementals will always be the supplementals. If the operator isn't teaching them ON TYPE, then it's not a safety-oriented operatpr and it needs to be shut down. But, I'm sorry, you don't need to know your way around an HSI or how to launch a taildragger to fly the 777. You need to know when it isn't kosher to use open descent mode and what the autothrust mode is when you do use it. You don't need to master the engine out technique on a cable-driven elevator twin turboprop to fly the A320. You do need to know the automatic stabilizer trim behaviors and not to shut down flight control computers in flight via the breaker panel. You don't need to know how to barrel-roll a Stearman to fly a 737NG. You do need to know that you cannot execute an automated go-around on a single autopilot. In short, you need to master the machine you are flying and the technique required to fly it as it is designed to be flown, which, in modern transport aircraft, is via a flight control system and glass navigation cues most of the time.

                I do admire a pilot who can wrangle a Piper Cub onto a country lane in a 20kt crosswind while keeping his cigar lit, but that's a different game altogether. When I'm in seat 34C I want the pilot to be trained on what I'm sitting in. And when things go wrong, I want the pilot to be trained on what I'm sitting in.

                Comment


                • #38
                  The job is also to hand-fly and do it well when needed, to not the be afraid to hit the "gimme my frigging plane back" button, to do "click click, clack clack" if needed, if the "system" is not responding as expected (even if you don't even know at that time why it isn't, even if it was your mistake in the first place), your job is also not to ask "what is it doing now" but do whatever it takes to make it do what you need first, and then ask "why was it doing that". Many accidents happened as a result of not managing the system well, most of them could have been avoided not only by managing the systems well in the first place, but by taking crisp manual action after the system failed to do as expected. As you sort of said, it is not one or the other but one and the other. But the bias is there. It is interesting to see how you mentioned glass cockpit, digital autopilot, magenta lines, complex computerized avionics. But where are the " fundamentals"? Only in "the basics will be always the basics". No launching a taildragger, but knowing that in a 777 open descent is not kosher. Not engine-out technique with a cable elevator, but the behavior of the automatic pitch trim in the A320. Not rolling a Stearman, but to know that automated go arounds need 2 autopilots. You said you master the machine you are flying, and who can oppose that? But wouldn't it be nice that the pilot of a 777 in open descent will pay more attention to the airspeed and immediately manually advances the throttles the moment that the speed goes a knot below target and the TLs do not start to advance by themselves as (wrongly) expected? Or that the pilot of a 737 swiftly reverts to manual flight to complete the go-around after his single-AP automated attempt failed failed (as expected)? Or that the pilot of a 777 will immediately firewall the throttles after initiating a go-around after touchdown when he didn't hear, feel, or measure the engines spooling up, the acceleration of the plane, his body pressed against the back of the seat, etc...? Or that the pilots of a 737 reverts to manual flight after the AP/AT fails at keeping the speed due to a known issue with the radio-altimeter, and if they go as far as activating the stickshaker they at least manage the approach to stall in an appropriate way (that never includes activating automation in the middle of the fight)? Or that the pilots of an A330 don't actively stall and keep stalling the plane all the way to the ocean after they failed to perform the simple memory items for a correctly identified UAS? In all these cases, the first mistakes, related with automation and systems, where type-dependent. The second ones were failures on universal pilot skills. The first ones should be avoided with initial and recurrent type specific training, in the airlines. Where are you going to learn the second ones if not in the universal basic training, in the 1st 1500 (or 200) hours? Aerodynamics, the 3 Newton's Laws of Motion and manual flight using the 4 typical controls are not type specific.

                  And, the most important thing:

                  Q: "Why should he? The job has changed"
                  A: Because being a pilot is not just a job.

                  --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                  --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    ....and don't forget that most people accepted the fact that Sully getting US Airways Flight 1549 down into the Hudson came down to his previous experience and skills as a glider pilot.

                    When I fly, my idea of heaven is having a Captain who is ex-military with a whole bunch of years experience behind him hand flying his aircraft. Todays pilots actually probably only have 20 to 30 minutes maximum hands on during a 12 hour flight. It is entirely possible that they have never actually flown the real thing before, qualifying instead in a simulator.
                    If it 'ain't broken........ Don't try to mend it !

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      The universe may explode...

                      Although this is not a black and white issue.

                      I was thinking about what tail dragger skills are so special...

                      Good rudder skills on roll out? Contrast this with Evan who is judgmental when an ATP touches rudder pedals.

                      What good is a non controlled airport? What good are cryptic steam gauges? (might weed out weaker pilots... but not 100%).

                      Who the hell needs a stabilized approach in a Cub?

                      Part of me is with Evan... train 'em to do their job..hand propping experience doesn't make my trip in 32A safer.

                      I do agree with Gabriel that hand flying and maneuvering and being familiar with side slips and full flap power off 'dives' and a concern with airspeed and attitude (and hard pull ups and AOA) are important and do come from light plane operation more than RJ operation.

                      And one more nuance... there's subtleties - Puppy mill practice for the test-to hell with wisdom. Practice the hell out of full power, max climb... but just not to the detriment that pulling up a little bit too much =[Gabriel's long list].

                      I am not sure that these skills only come from tail draggers. Too much of it rests with the individual pilot. How quick the auto pilot goes on and off and whether skills are honed or you just go through the motions.

                      Apologies to the pros... more outsider pontification on how we think your industry should be run*. Just a statement that there's a middle ground out there (which Evan will dismiss and Gabriel will agree to at some length).

                      *and a big dose of ironing to be telling ATL and VNav and Bobby how more hand flying and light AC experience and fundamentals are important.
                      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                        The job is also to hand-fly and do it well when needed
                        Yes, they teach that Gabriel. Do you really think they don't?

                        Again, you wrote something that pined for the days of yore, before magenta lines and 99.99% autoflight as if we should still be teaching pilots these days the way we used to. Well, first of all, we DO teach ALL of them in GA aircraft to learn the fundamentals. But then we teach them to learn how to operate a 99.99% autoflight aircraft and how to navigate with current technology. Where's the problem there?

                        There is a problem with CERTAIN flight schools that are failing to teach the fundamentals enough. But this a problem at the fundamental level, not in the advanced training. And it's a regulatory and oversight problem, not an institutional one.

                        your job is also not to ask "what is it doing now"
                        Exactly. Your job is to KNOW what it's doing now and WHY. Your job is situational awareness. If you have weak in-depth training on your 99.99% autoflight aircraft, you probably will lose this awareness instantly and end up in that deadly regime of confusion, where you make unthinkable errors.

                        Renslow was a CPI. He knew his fundamentals. He knew how to recover from stall warning. He lost his situational awareness when the plane he was flying behaved unexpectedly, startling him, because he was not familiar with the specific behaviors of its systems (albeit along with possible fatigue and non-sterile distraction).

                        The pilot who pranged AF447 knew how to hand fly. Why he did what he did, we may never know, but it was almost certainly out of scrambled situational awareness and he probably thought he had protection from stall because he lacked a proper understanding of control law degradation. The crew did not recover because they had a similarly scrambled situational awareness, not knowing (as they should have) the implications of A330 stabilizer trim behavior and stall warning thresholds.

                        The AirAsia crew had a third grader's understanding of systems. It cost them all their situational awareness. I'm sure either one of them could perform stall recovery in a 172.

                        There is a rash of botched go-arounds leading to loss of control crashes due to ignorance of automated stab trim behaviors. There are others that resulted form an expectation that the autoflight would perform the go-around when the autoflight wasn't available. The same goes for windshear recovery.

                        And AA587 revealed that wide-body pilots were being taught wake turbulence rudder technique for much smaller planes, which proved, ultimately, fatal. Rudder technique is not simply a universal, fundamental thing. In a jet that large, in-flight rudder is mainly there for crosswinds and engine failure. If you bring your tail-dragger mentality into an A300, you just might break something.

                        The problem is what happens when 'fat dumb and happy' turns into 'what's it doing now' and all those fundamentals get blanked while the mind searches for answers. This is probably more likely to happen to a veteran DC-9 pilot with 200 hours on an A320 than it is to a 'puppy mill' pilot with 2000 hours exclusively on the A320 (assuming the 'puppy mill' is doing it's job to train them for unusual events). But mainly, in all these events, what I am seeing is a weakness in terms of in-depth systems understanding and expectations needed to retain situational awareness during unusual events.

                        Again, I get the romance of stick and rudder airmanship, but modern airliners are automated machines that occasionally require hand-flying skills but 99.99% of the time require systems administration. I want to know the pilot in front has become a pilot by learning those stick and rudder skills (which they have) and then became a 777 pilot by learning how that particular machine works and how to operate it in every foreseeable circumstance.

                        And I agree with you that ALL pilots need to be well-educated on fundamental aerodynamics, but I fail to see how that pertains to the type of aircraft or level of technology. [/QUOTE]

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                          The day that you retired, another pilot joined an airline for the 1st time. Very young, about 20 years old, he spent the last 2 years preparing for this. 2 years ago, he had zero hours. 2 years ago, he had his 1st flight in a Cessna 172 equipped with a Garmin G-1000 PFD and ND, with a GNS GPS and navigator and autopilot. Flying more than 1 hour per day (weather permitting) in a sunny Miami airport, taking off and landing from long asphalt runways, dragging with power every approach to keep a 3-deg glideslope, always keeping white over red on the PAPI. 4 months later he had his PPL, 2 weeks later he got his twin endorsement in a Seminole (also equipped with a G-100o and AP), then he did his instruments rating and CPL flying mostly in the twin (he needs twin hours) and, 9 months after zero hours, with 500 flight hours, ha got his CFI. Next day he started flying as a CFI in the same institution ("flight school" is too small a name for this place), flying the same 2 planes he flew as a student, and has been doing so for the last 15 months and making barely any money at all, just a nominal and symbolic $ because he cannot do it for free (it would be illegal), but the basic idea is that you gain hours and the school has free instructors, instructors that don't have any motivation or passion for teaching, other than making hours towards a completely different goal. During those 15 months he interviewed with many airlines, those that fly regional jets under the regional brand of one of the 3 bigs. Those that you think you are flying American, United or Delta, when in fact you are not even flying their regional brand. One of them pre-contracted them. 3 months ago, with still fewer hours than needed for the ATP, he started ground school and sim training with that airline, in parallel with his flight instructor activities to gain the latest hours he needed. Yesterday he flew his hour number 1500. Today, 2 years after his first flight ever as a prospect PPL, he sits in the right seat of an ERJ with some 90 pax behind, and a captain next to him that is maybe 5 or 7 years older than himself and had a very similar path. He invested about 150 grands to get here. He will spend some years to recover that much, In the long run, it will be a good business though. He never flew a plane without tv screens as instrument and without at AP. He never will. He never wore other thing than a white shirt with epaulets while flying. He never will. He never flew in an uncontrolled airport with a grass or dirt strip. he never will. He flew 1500 hours in piston airplanes. He will never fly one hour again in another thing than a jet. The flight school he leaves behind has a fancy, important-sounding name, something like "PPCTP" that stands for Professional Pilot Career Training Program", but is known as a "puppy mill". The same day that this pilot seats in this right seat of an RJ for the first time, a 747 captain with 25K hours total, including 10K hours in pistons, which includes 6K hours in taildraggers, most of them without even a radio, a starter or even an electrical system at all, most of them in uncontrolled airports with a grass or dirt strip, leaves the left seat of his Jumbo airliner for the last time.

                          How does it feel?
                          How does it feel?

                          First off Gabe, That is an exceptionally well written post, and is so spot on I can’t tell you. How do I feel? A little sad, and a lot of relief! Not at all missing the commute to and from work, the bag drag in and out of the airport and hotels. And the new wonder kids that you describe and Evan and 3WE seem to think are the end all to beat all.

                          I will tell you a story about it. I transitioned to the 400 in 2012 after flying the 100/200/300 for 14 years. I had NEVER flown a glass airplane in my life. I was very lucky that my partner, that had been one of my first officers on the classic, was a former check airman at the regionals in EMB and Canadair aircraft. He beat me up every night in the hotel getting me up to speed on the glass and the FMS. I owe him big time! So let us now jump forward about 6 months. I am taking a flight in a brand new -8 from Huntsville, Alabama to Luxembourg. We are taking off at 10:45 at night in a star filled night, with no weather and an airport that has 2 North / South runways and a published SID that reads, maintain runway heading to 5000’ expect radar vectors. Not a complex procedure right? I had slept a full 8 hours before the flight, so I was well rested, I had 2 first officers, one had been at Atlas around 2 years and the other brand new. The brand new F/O was in the right seat and the other in the center. I briefed the departure before pushback as a HAND FLOWN departure. We had a max gross weight take-off of 987000 pounds. We departed to the North, and at around 700’ AGL the first officer in the right seat exclaimed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING” well remember I am fairly new to the glass and all so I take a look at the ND and everything looks good, the engine display on the ECAS is normal, and I ask him what is wrong. He responds to me “YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THAT” (now I am typing in all caps where this F/O has his voice raised and a harried tone to it). I said doing what? He now says “THEY DON”T WANT YOU TO DO THAT” I now realize that he is talking about toggling the auto-pilot on at 250” AGL, which is what they are teaching in the school house now and I tell him let’s talk about this when we get to cruise altitude. His initial “WHAT ARE YOU DOING” came with the gear up but flaps still at 10.
                          Now normally I hand fly on a nice day, well rested, no weather to contend with, not an airport with a complicated SID, i.e. Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong etc., to 10000 -14000’. But now I am a little pissed at this kid so I hand flew up into the mid 20’s. The dash 8 does not climb like a scorched eagle when she is heavy, so now we are at cruise at FL310 off the coast of North Carolina. I turn to him and ask him “did you not understand the part of my briefing where I said it would be a hand flown departure”? He said well I did not think you were going to really do it. I asked him whether or not he ever hand flew the aircraft when he had the opportunity to do so. A place like Miami, Huntsville, Anchorage. He responded I hand fly the simulator every 6 months.
                          So here we are about to coast out across the Atlantic, might have been his 5th or 6th time doing a crossing including his IOE. I turn to him and I ask him, okay so here we are out over the North Atlantic, our fancy ass electric airplane has just checked in with Gander on CPDLC we have climbed to FL330 for the crossing and assigned a track and MACH .85 and you have gotten your HF frequencies. You are sitting back relaxing when every bell, whistle, horn and light in the cockpit begins to flash and wail, the auto-pilot disconnects, and the airplane starts to descend, loose speed, and deviate off course. You frantically mash every button on the MCP trying to get the auto-pilot to re-engage, but nada, not a damn thing will work! You going to just sit back and say “this can’t be happening” and AF the jet into the North Atlantic? Because I sure as hell am not! I am going to grab the yoke and a handful of thrust-levers and hand fly the aircraft to the destination, the alternate, or an airport of opportunity. You see why it’s a good idea to hand fly when you get the chance? He turned to me with a look in his eye and said, “I do now Captain”.

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Great story!

                            Thankfully, it sounds like there's a plan in place to deal with those "puppy mill" pilots... http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-to...ots-180963931/
                            Be alert! America needs more lerts.

                            Eric Law

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by elaw View Post
                              Great story!

                              Thankfully, it sounds like there's a plan in place to deal with those "puppy mill" pilots... http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-to...ots-180963931/
                              I never will!

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Evan View Post
                                Yes, they teach that Gabriel. Do you really think they don't?

                                Again, you wrote something that pined for the days of yore, before magenta lines and 99.99% autoflight as if we should still be teaching pilots these days the way we used to. Well, first of all, we DO teach ALL of them in GA aircraft to learn the fundamentals. But then we teach them to learn how to operate a 99.99% autoflight aircraft and how to navigate with current technology. Where's the problem there?

                                There is a problem with CERTAIN flight schools that are failing to teach the fundamentals enough. But this a problem at the fundamental level, not in the advanced training. And it's a regulatory and oversight problem, not an institutional one.



                                Exactly. Your job is to KNOW what it's doing now and WHY. Your job is situational awareness. If you have weak in-depth training on your 99.99% autoflight aircraft, you probably will lose this awareness instantly and end up in that deadly regime of confusion, where you make unthinkable errors.

                                Renslow was a CPI. He knew his fundamentals. He knew how to recover from stall warning. He lost his situational awareness when the plane he was flying behaved unexpectedly, startling him, because he was not familiar with the specific behaviors of its systems (albeit along with possible fatigue and non-sterile distraction).

                                Well Evan, You will be very happy to know that is where the industry is heading. What they want and what they are training for is a little human robot. Get to the airplane 30 minutes prior to departure, program the FMS with the SID, the route, the step-climbs, the decent, and the STAR. Call for pushback taxi to the runway, do the take-off (hoping that everything works) and at 250 feet above the ground, call for left, center or right auto-pilot to command. Sit back, talk on the radio occasionally, do a little paperwork, maybe make an announcement to the back or two, eat a little on a longer flight, then pull out the IPad an with the charts on it for the arrival airport, check the arrival against the ATIS off of the ACARS, set the auto-brakes, do an auto-land and then finally disconnect the auto-pilot and taxi to the gate.
                                Works great until the day you come out of Bogota, loose number one do to an uncontained failure that throws a titanium turbine blade into number two. You think the auto-pilot will fly the aircraft now?

                                The pilot who pranged AF447 knew how to hand fly. Why he did what he did, we may never know, but it was almost certainly out of scrambled situational awareness and he probably thought he had protection from stall because he lacked a proper understanding of control law degradation. The crew did not recover because they had a similarly scrambled situational awareness, not knowing (as they should have) the implications of A330 stabilizer trim behavior and stall warning thresholds.

                                The AirAsia crew had a third grader's understanding of systems. It cost them all their situational awareness. I'm sure either one of them could perform stall recovery in a 172.

                                There is a rash of botched go-arounds leading to loss of control crashes due to ignorance of automated stab trim behaviors. There are others that resulted form an expectation that the autoflight would perform the go-around when the autoflight wasn't available. The same goes for windshear recovery.

                                And AA587 revealed that wide-body pilots were being taught wake turbulence rudder technique for much smaller planes, which proved, ultimately, fatal. Rudder technique is not simply a universal, fundamental thing. In a jet that large, in-flight rudder is mainly there for crosswinds and engine failure. If you bring your tail-dragger mentality into an A300, you just might break something.

                                The problem is what happens when 'fat dumb and happy' turns into 'what's it doing now' and all those fundamentals get blanked while the mind searches for answers. This is probably more likely to happen to a veteran DC-9 pilot with 200 hours on an A320 than it is to a 'puppy mill' pilot with 2000 hours exclusively on the A320 (assuming the 'puppy mill' is doing it's job to train them for unusual events). But mainly, in all these events, what I am seeing is a weakness in terms of in-depth systems understanding and expectations needed to retain situational awareness during unusual events.

                                Again, I get the romance of stick and rudder airmanship, but modern airliners are automated machines that occasionally require hand-flying skills but 99.99% of the time require systems administration. I want to know the pilot in front has become a pilot by learning those stick and rudder skills (which they have) and then became a 777 pilot by learning how that particular machine works and how to operate it in every foreseeable circumstance.

                                And I agree with you that ALL pilots need to be well-educated on fundamental aerodynamics, but I fail to see how that pertains to the type of aircraft or level of technology.

                                Well Evan, You will be very happy to know that is where the industry is heading. What they want and what they are training for is a little human robot. Get to the airplane 30 minutes prior to departure, program the FMS with the SID, the route, the step-climbs, the decent, and the STAR. Call for pushback taxi to the runway, do the take-off (hoping that everything works) and at 250 feet above the ground, call for left, center or right auto-pilot to command. Sit back, talk on the radio occasionally, do a little paperwork, maybe make an announcement to the back or two, eat a little on a longer flight, then pull out the IPad with the charts on it for the arrival airport, check the arrival against the ATIS off of the ACARS, set the auto-brakes, do an auto-land and then finally disconnect the auto-pilot and taxi to the gate.


                                Works great until the day you come out of Bogota, loose number one do to an uncontained failure that throws a titanium turbine blade into number two. You think the auto-pilot will fly the aircraft now?

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