The pilot being checked during IOE is fully type rated and using all available tools at his disposal to fly the airplane. He also has a certified instructor with him, In part to answer any operational question.

Even still I were king, I would have him spend some time in the pattern getting some landings under his belt in a pilot trainer with other new guys. Unfortunately as simulators have gotten better that fell out of fashion.

Is IOE training? It should not be aircraft training. They just successfully finished their type training. Learning the routine of a new plane is certainly being taught, but not how to hand fly when weather gets bad. That has already been demonstrated. It's not even allowed because a new guy has higher minimums for a while.

The point being made is hand flying safer than using automation when the weather is bad?

Everbody has an opinion what's yours?

I mix handflying and automation on line trips. I don't mind hand flying an approach in wx, but I get more training out of visuals, and enough ILSs etc at night that it all seems to work out. If down to minimums I use automation, and some approaches require it, but I feel comfortable that I could handfly a single engine approach and miss if necessary. It wouldn't be my first choice, although some fleets require that. I don't think one size fits all in the pursuit of proficiency. Having a second guy in the cockpit keeps you honest with yourself, and gives you a baseline to compare your own performance.

There is a lot of training done on IOE. You have to learn to land all over again, as the sim lands like the sim. My first landing after four years on the panel was on a full revenue flight. It was...ok...

First landing in a 76 was an overwater night visual in marginal vis to a poorly lit runway. It was also...ok....more challenging than all the sim hand flown ILSs by far.

Automation and proficiency both take some effort and diligence, often in opposition to each other. In general, guys seem to pick up the hand flying aspects faster than they pick up the nuances of automation.

Every flight is practice, every flight is real.

The passengers should be more scared if you tell them the computer will do all the flying because you feel manually flying is unsafe.

The most disturbing part of your philosophy is the assumption that you can train in good weather, knowing what is coming, and then, without warning or notice, suddenly perform adequately in bad weather without doing it regularly. Hand flying an approach should not be viewed as an emergency, it should be perfectly normal.

Mike C.

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What?


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Agree completely.




Agreed again; hand flying is a must have skill.

I am not making an assumption about training in good weather it has been working fine.

I don't reference outside when flying anymore. Maybe that's why I don't see what the big deal is. I look outside but not to help my flying.

How was this an automation failure? It was an older PC12, not an NG so it wasn't packed with the latest and greatest. The pilot flew into a storm. This crash had nothing to do with automation.

Well said. Particularly true in this specific period in time.

So Mike, I have a question for you. As evidenced by a recent crash, one must also be capable, current, and confident in your ability to fly partial panel in IMC if your AI fails. With that in mind, do you periodically cover up your AI and fly partial panel approaches in real IMC with passengers on board?

This is pretty close to what I've been trying to say.

Mike, I do agree that any pilot who always relies on their autopilot to fly approaches if the weather is IMC will likely suffer a loss of hand flying skills, especially if they don't practice hand flying approaches in a sim or in simulated IMC with a safety pilot. But that's not what I'm advocating.

Iinstead I'm saying that given the relative rarity of actual autopilot failures that result in accidents, pilots with the same level of proficiency WRT hand flying in IMCwho often use their autopilots for approaches are less likely to have an accident due to loss of control or CFIT. And I'm also saying that the resulting reduction in hand IMC flying will be more than offset by the increased safety that proper use of automation provides. Of course this does require that pilots who rely on their autopilots and other automation understand those devices well and are proficient with their use.

I think it's well accepted that a crew of two (assuming proper CRM is applied) is safer on an approach than a single pilot flying similar equipment in IMC. Would you recommend a pilot avoid taking advantage of the second crewmember because the other pilot might not be available one day and by then the pilot left to his own devices will have lost the ability to handle everything by himself? To me, dismissing the advantages of using all available resources represents pretty much the same choice for a single pilot.

Another analogy would be an SOP that dictated pulling breakers in an Airbus to disable normal and flying in manual law all of the time so the pilot's ability to operate that way doesn't atrophy. Clearly this would have made the AF crash less likely but how many other crashes would have resulted from the loss of the airframe protection provided by normal law?

All that said, I do strongly believe in maintaining one's hand flying skills but I also believe that can be done without flying every approach by hand.

No, I don't create an emergency where there is none.

Electing not to use a working autopilot is not an emergency.

Mike C.

Do you use a flight director?

Pilots who never hand fly an approach in IMC are not as proficient as those who do.

The FAA disagrees with you in any case. They feel more manual flying should take place even for airline pilots who fly way more hours than we do and get training every 6 months. Despite that, the FAA wants to see more hand flying IN REGULAR SERVICE. If that is the case for airline pilots, then us amateurs need all the practice we can get. Under the hood every 6 months ain't enough.

https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviatio ... O13002.pdf

Operators are encouraged to take an integrated approach by incorporating emphasis of manual flight operations into both line operations and training

Gee, that sounds like "practice" with passengers on board.

Can you cite GA accidents which fit your profile? That is an accident caused by hand flying an approach, where an autopilot was available, and where the pilot was proficient in hand flying?

That might be the null set. It seems contradictory to have a proficient hand flying pilot who then crashes on the approach.

Meanwhile, I already produced a list of accidents where autopilots failed and pilots could not handle it. This occurs throughout the spectrum, from light GA all the way to major airlines.

It could be your intuition is simply wrong about the dangers of hand flying and the safety of the autopilot. Got evidence?


The automation creates the dependency that leads to the danger. If you never hand fly in IMC, your skills to do so evaporate and then one day, an autopilot failure WILL be an emergency for YOU. Hand flying an approach should NOT be an emergency. If it is, then the problem is lack of pilot proficiency.

Mike C.

In the case of this PC12 crash, the pilot was low TT and very low time in the PC12. He did a stupid pilot trick. Had nothing to do with being in a PC12. He was trying to out climb a storm and got too slow according to the report. How anyone can attempt this in any plane makes you question what he was doing as PIC in the first place. I'm not sure he ever tried to hand fly the plane until he'd already gotten himself into a stall. There may have been an AP disconnect but there was not AP "failure". The plane was working great until the storm tore it apart.

Doctors practice medicine and occasionally get it right.

Wasn't this a SF50 thread? So from MU2s, we're now arguing if autopilots are for chumps? These themes seem to endlessly jump from thread to thread. Perhaps the FAA should ban Autpilots all together to improve safety. Forget integrated flight decks, real men should only be allowed to hand fly these...