BoomerPete Posted September 6, 2003 Share Posted September 6, 2003 >>>What I did assert was that as a result of the highly automated environment and our reliance upon it we tend to let our "flying skills" atrophy and instead rely heavily on the automation. When the automation gets turned off, ie. when visually manouvering in the mountains, your average airline pilot may lack the requisite skill to safely complete the manouver.<<< With all due respect, and I don't mean to sound rude about it, but I think that's a crock, especially as it applies to the incident in question. I don't know about you but I, and I'm guessing most pilots I know, disengage the autopilot on the 'bus and hand fly approaches every bit as much as we did when we were flying 72's and the like. Sure, we don't do raw data instrument flying the same as we used to, but that's hardly relevant to this situation. What the increased level of automation has done for us is allow us to safely operate the aircraft in environments that were beyond us before. 100m RVR for landings and 75m for takeoff were not things you'd contemplate with the 72 or 73. As far as hand flying and visual maneuvering, what's changed? With respect to this incident, nothing so far reported suggests that there was any lack of maneuvering skill, rather the missing skill seems more probably to have been navigational and beyond that situational in nature. That in itself is part of the mystery in that there's no doubt that the A319 is far better machine than the 72 for maintaining a sense of positional awareness when operating visually. Not knowing what the prevailing circumstances were at the time I'm certainly not going to start passing judgements on anyone or anything related to the incident. My point is that I just can't see how automation or automation dependency has any relationship to identifying the right airport which seems to be your contention. Pete PS - Are you on the bus? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon Posted September 6, 2003 Share Posted September 6, 2003 Likely, in the end, an error will be identified, with contributing factors. qb's sense of airmanship/consideration did not shine through, in my opinion, something else did. Nice to see you here again compadre. kind regards dragon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
60N30W Posted September 7, 2003 Share Posted September 7, 2003 Thanks buddy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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