Earlier in the week, I read a brief CNN report about autopilots and automation dulling the airmanship skills of commercial pilots and found myself physically wincing at the idea that many would read this. 

I winced because this is a nuanced issue rather than something to be “announced” with a brief report.  It’s unnecessarily scary and just puts more rumour into the mill.

The commercial pilot today does use their flight management systems in all phases of flight and that isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing.  It allows for more precision and more precision means less delays and greater safety.  Part of those systems helps avoid collisions with other aircraft and other parts allow a pilot to route their aircraft around thunderstorms instead of right into them.  They allow better fuel management which means not only can the aircraft carry less fuel, it also gives the pilot a better picture of how much fuel they have left and therefore a better picture of when it is time to bug out to another airport.

You really have to walk in another man’s shoes to truly understand the job they do.  I haven’t served as a pilot but I do know the airline industry quite well.  Let me say this:  I have no problem with the level of training that pilots undergo today and I have no problem with the level of skill they fly with.  Today’s first year first officer receives better training and better oversight than ever before.

Think I’m wrong?  Ask an older pilot about the days before Cockpit Resource Management came into vogue.  First officers duties in those days often amounted to getting coffee and doing the dirty work without ever really getting to fly.  Now, those new first officers get to fly regularly and under the supervision of captains who have been trained well and who are in possession of the knowledge that a team works better than an individual.

Experience counts in the pilot’s world.  Flying the real thing with the stick or yoke does improve skills.  It’s true that airlines would prefer that not happen too often because the imprecise flying does incur a cost.  Simulators can do many things and help with many things but time in a simulator is also very expensive. 

Could there be a bit more hand flying both on takeoff and landing as well as at altitude?  Probably.  The Air France disaster shows just how important it is to understand flying at altitude and how much that experience counts. 

Lest you think that that experience at atltitude comes with no cost, it doesn’t.  Hand flying a commercial airliner at 35,000 feet in the air comes with conditions that are very unforgiving of a mistake.  There are times when the difference between overspeeding a wing and stalling a wing is just tens of knots in speed.  That automation keeps it there with computers and full digital control of engines.  It’s actually *safer* than hand flying and there is a reason why you don’t read about pilots playing with the aircraft by hand while transiting the country. 

They don’t want to die anymore than you do.

The automation is safe and pilots allowing the automation to do that work is safer than the alternative.  That said, I do wish airlines would schedule time in a simulator for those conditions that don’t come with penalties.  It’s the kind of experience that is hard replicate and it would help if a pilot were allowed to “push the envelope” under those conditions to understand better, through experience, what happens when “things go wrong”.   Removing any punitive actions for “crashing the simulator” would encourage them to learn just how wrong things can go in a very short time.  Knowing it and experiencing it are two different things.

Conditions for training pilots can always better.  But it’s also a balance between needing them to be working “the line” and training.   At the end of the day, it really hasn’t ever been safer to fly and pilots have never been better trained.

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