Airbus VS Boeing

[ZBBYLW]

I fly an Airbus in Canada and my airline encourages hand flying in thr FOM. I encourage my FOs to fly with what ever level of automation they feel is right. Sadly some of them have thanked me after as they feel most times when they want to hand fly they are a burden to their parter so for me to mention it they feel like i am more accepting.

Personally i hand fly most of my approaches, sometimes from LOC intercept othertime from 20,000 feet. Some times going into very quite places the FD will also go off at 20,000. Other times I will leave the AP and A/THR on until on GS or if weather is right at mins ill leave it all on. I feel i now have a much better sense of the energy state of the aircraft. I know when the airplane is heavier or lighter than calculated, I know when there is a t/w or shear before looking down to confirm it, in essence the company is getting more out of what they pay me, and the pax are getting a better overall pilot than my first 6 months on the bus where I usually left the A/THR on, and would disconnect after final flap selection.

The aircraft is operated more efficiently now and to say the company would get more out of the AP and me flying the FCU and not the airplanw is completely false in my experience. Not everyone who flies at the airline strives for the last 10%, but if ypu do you can find efficiencies where the programes profiles are not the best and you can do a better job either in selected modes or in control.

[Old fella]

If you're not using automation except for the first and last 500ft, you may be doing it wrong. The passengers, airline and aircraft itself deserve the best and in my case at least that means letting the automation do its thing while we(humans) manage. Oh yeah, they hand fly fine low and get worse with altitude....physics and all that.

This attitude is becoming archaic. The passengers, airline and aircraft deserve to have a crew who are able to perform equally well under all levels of automation, from full to none. The presumption that your basic instrument flying skills remain intact with almost no practice is not only wrong, it's arrogant. Skilful and accurate situational awareness and aircraft control is a volatile skill. You try to justify not taking that seriously by talking about how the passengers deserve not to be subjected to your aircraft handling, when you're actually doing them a disservice by deliberately avoiding being at your best. Your attitude panders to those who profit from diminishing the importance of human beings in the cockpit. Full automation is their goal, and if pilots themselves are not willing to contribute to their own relevance, then it can't come soon enough. Cockpit automation was originally meant to augment the abilities of pilots with fully developed skills, in order to bring safety to a new level. Now, it just serves to preserve the status quo by acting as a crutch for underachievers.

Where to begin. I will start by representing the general fare paying passengers because I am not an airline pilot and know nothing about it at all. We as passengers do not give a Class One Cape Breton Fiddlers F@ck if you hand fly/auto fly in 1/4 vs 3/4 configuration or any configuration nor if you do it in a 1/2 beat in the key of C. Honestly, we do not understand what goes on up there and more to the point have little, if any knowledge. We do have a few items though:
1. Reasonable fares that won’t break us while at the same time keeping your airline in the black so you up front guys and gals can have a decent living wage and support you families like we do. We have that in common though. Ditto for the back end folks as well, they do contribute to our well being and safety.
2. Get us to our destinations in a timely manner as best as you can. Yes, we do indeed understand weather, airplanes are machines, they break, pilots and FAs can’t fly 24/7. The airline hating hyper- partisans think we should feel the same way they do about airline operations and services. Honestly, we don’t.
3 Keep the airplane right side up and pointed the correct direction.
4.Try your Damnest to make sure our baggage arrives with us, that is important. There are things in our baggage we need, iPads, skivvies, seniors need the hearing aids, young couples need their birth control etc, etc. Imagine if I didn’t get my $500.00 bottle of Château d’Yquem cause the baggage didn’t arrive for that special 33 av night at Royal York in Toronto. Thanks Air Canada but you came through as ole brown bag was fourth on conveyor.

Cheers.

[Rockie]

Old Fella, one of these days I’d love to buy you a drink.

[Old fella]

Old Fella, one of these days I’d love to buy you a drink.

Not sure if you could afford me Rockie. I acquired Champagne tastes but alas, I have a paupers pocket. I promise though, I will keep it to a dull roar.

Cheers

[Rockie]

Shit...I should have said beer.

[Old fella]

Shit...I should have said beer.

Indeed, you’re on. Quality crafts though, not the mass produced industrial swill- mentioning no names of course outside of Fords buck-a-beer jackpot.

[complexintentions]

I'd like to buy Meatservo a bloody case of whatever for his posts on this thread. Absolutely nails it.

When someone asks "is the Boeing or the Airbus more fun to fly manually", and someone's response is "you shouldn't ever fly them manually", it reminds me of the disappointment I felt early in my career, when I realized that "having fun" was only going to happen if one stuck to the outer fringes and avoided the spiffy uniforms and high paycheques of the front line. I will refrain from making comments in this subject from now on.

PLEASE do not refrain. I'm one of those "scheduled airline pilots" and I effing love your posts! As I'm sure that the vast majority of other airline guys aside from a few hypersensitive types do as well! Screw those guys!

[Rockie]

I'd like to buy Meatservo a bloody case of whatever for his posts on this thread. Absolutely nails it.

When someone asks "is the Boeing or the Airbus more fun to fly manually", and someone's response is "you shouldn't ever fly them manually", it reminds me of the disappointment I felt early in my career, when I realized that "having fun" was only going to happen if one stuck to the outer fringes and avoided the spiffy uniforms and high paycheques of the front line. I will refrain from making comments in this subject from now on.

PLEASE do not refrain. I'm one of those "scheduled airline pilots" and I effing love your posts! As I'm sure that the vast majority of other airline guys aside from a few hypersensitive types do as well! Screw those guys!

Bullshit.

If you pine away for the good old days of hand bombing range approaches you're in the wrong business. Fortunately I know you're fully involved in today's real world which is why I say.....

Bullshit.

If I'm wrong I suggest you go get a job flying something simple. But I'm not wrong...so bullshit.

[C.W.E.]

If I'm wrong I suggest you go get a job flying something simple. But I'm not wrong...so bullshit.

There you go Complex, you have been shown just how ignorant about aviation you really are by one of the worlds most recognised experts on all things aviation.

It makes perfect sense that as time passes flying airplanes gets harder and harder because the designers and builders of airplanes make them more difficult to operate. Not to mention how much more difficult flying from airport to airport is ( especially flying a VFR approach into SFO. )

Looking back I can see how Rockie is correct as I recall how much more difficult airplanes are becoming to operate, I was remembering the difference there is even in the first few minutes in them like starting the engines, all I need do is remember starting the engines in the DC6 and then relate the DC6 to a A320 engine start and I am just blown away at how often Rockie is bang on about the subject.

[Rockie]

Aren't you the guy who had five (or was it six) Airbus instructors give up trying to teach you how to fly the 320?

[C.W.E.]

Aren't you the guy who had five (or was it six) Airbus instructors give up trying to teach you how to fly the 320?

No.

The sim training was given to me by Airbus at their factory in Toulouse when they were a sponsor for a movie I was flying for.

I had zero interest in being a paint by numbers robot for an airline Rockie, but it was interesting and fun learning how the A320 flies being taught by the manufacturer.

[Rockie]

Ah well then, I'll defer to the superior expertise your fam flights in the 320 sim gives you...

[C.W.E.]

Ah well then, I'll defer to the superior expertise your fam flights in the 320 sim gives you...

When or where did I ever suggest that I have " superior expertise " in the 320 sim Rockie?

However what are the chances Airbus would offer you free training unless your employer requested it.

Knowing how the aviation world operates the only way they would offer you anything is if you have some special skills that the other tens of thousands of airline pilots do not have.

Give them a call Rockie and tell them you would like some free sim training.

Let me know what they say.

P.S. ::

Tell them you also want all your travel and living expenses paid by them also.

They paid mine.

[altiplano]

[pelmet]

Correction regarding Asiana, they didn’t crash because they couldn’t fly without automation. They crashed because they didn’t understand the automation they had. If only automation in these airplanes was as simple as “On/Off” but it isn’t. It’s complex and requires skill and comprehensive knowledge to operate safely in all conditions and circumstances.

Disagree with both actually although the quoted post is on the right track. However, it goes deeper. Not understanding the automation was the start of the problem but I would be willing to bet that many new airline pilots on type don't fully understand the automation and have unknowingly screwed things up at some point with an undesired thrust setting yet didn't crash. The question is, how do you discover it. Closely monitor your airspeed on approach and maybe your thrust setting. I not very familiar with the Airbus but an Airbus guy told me recently of a flight into an airport in Florida. The other pilot set the missed approach altitude and pulled the button(I think the altitude button) which made the aircraft add thrust(exact details could be wrong) yet the thrust levers don't move. He noticed the airspeed increasing and they did something about it.

Looking at the pilot flying in the Asiana accident, he crashed because he wasn't paying attention to a critical item that he should have been paying attention to....his airspeed. So he messed up with the Flight level change function. So what. These things can happen and will happen to somebody at some point. But if he had taken the time to monitor the airspeed instead of assuming that the automatics(ie. autothrottle) would take care of it, almost certainly, he would have noticed a problem and added some power and it would have been nothing more than an unstable approach, maybe with a go-around. He did fly a 744 in the distant past which is fairly similar automation wise along with military aircraft so I'm sure he had plenty of experience using the thrust levers properly. But he obviously did not look at his airspeed for a significant amount of time. I suspect he was looking outside a lot trying to adjust pitch for the right view in the window.

As an aside....they also could have done an RNAV approach approach if a visual was too stressing for them(perhaps due to a punishment culture for recorded deviations) among other options.

Some people assume that the automatics will take care of the airspeed and therefore don't monitor the airspeed. I had someone mention that to me the other day. But things sometimes go wrong which is why the airspeed needs to be monitored. There can be improper airspeed due to pilot error associated with the automation(as happened to Asiana) or an actual system fault. One need only look at SAS in New York or THY on Amsterdam to see what can happen on rare occasion when airspeed is not scanned while on automatics.

Proper monitoring of airspeed is required before your first solo.

https://aviation-safety.net/database/re ... 19840228-0

https://aviation-safety.net/database/re ... 20090225-0

[goingnowherefast]

Whenever I go to sim, not only is it free, but they pay me. My expenses are paid as well.

[complexintentions]

I'd like to buy Meatservo a bloody case of whatever for his posts on this thread. Absolutely nails it.

When someone asks "is the Boeing or the Airbus more fun to fly manually", and someone's response is "you shouldn't ever fly them manually", it reminds me of the disappointment I felt early in my career, when I realized that "having fun" was only going to happen if one stuck to the outer fringes and avoided the spiffy uniforms and high paycheques of the front line. I will refrain from making comments in this subject from now on.

PLEASE do not refrain. I'm one of those "scheduled airline pilots" and I effing love your posts! As I'm sure that the vast majority of other airline guys aside from a few hypersensitive types do as well! Screw those guys!

Bullshit.

If you pine away for the good old days of hand bombing range approaches you're in the wrong business. Fortunately I know you're fully involved in today's real world which is why I say.....

Bullshit.

If I'm wrong I suggest you go get a job flying something simple. But I'm not wrong...so bullshit.

?!?

Sorry, which part of my post is bullshit? Where do I "pine away for the good old days"?

The only thing I "pine away" for is to fly with colleagues who still have some basic flying ability - even though they spend most of their time flying through the layer of automation that I most certainly do recognize as highly valuable! The "you shouldn't ever fly them manually" mindset is a huge threat to safety - as demonstrated regularly, increasingly, and recently, and Meat took it to task eloquently.

Some of us think it's still important to be able to fly without an autopilot. This was what I took as the essence of his post and what I so heartily agree with. Apparently you find this "bullshit", so why don't you just get back to your magenta line, wait for the next AC incident, and stfu?

[complexintentions]

Correction regarding Asiana, they didn’t crash because they couldn’t fly without automation. They crashed because they didn’t understand the automation they had. If only automation in these airplanes was as simple as “On/Off” but it isn’t. It’s complex and requires skill and comprehensive knowledge to operate safely in all conditions and circumstances.

Disagree with both actually although the quoted post is on the right track. However, it goes deeper. Not understanding the automation was the start of the problem but I would be willing to bet that many new airline pilots on type don't fully understand the automation and have unknowingly screwed things up at some point with an undesired thrust setting yet didn't crash. The question is, how do you discover it. Closely monitor your airspeed on approach and maybe your thrust setting. I not very familiar with the Airbus but an Airbus guy told me recently of a flight into an airport in Florida. The other pilot set the missed approach altitude and pulled the button(I think the altitude button) which made the aircraft add thrust(exact details could be wrong) yet the thrust levers don't move. He noticed the airspeed increasing and they did something about it.

Yes.

For once I agree with pelmet. It's fine to cite automation, lack of its understanding, whatever, as contributing factors to this accident. Blather on endlessly about swiss cheese models and yada yada. But ultimately it was a complete, utter, total lack - or temporary breakdown of, if one needs to be charitable - of basic flying skills that caused this. And not of just one pilot, but THREE sitting in a flight deck! Good God, if I'm on an observer seat I'd be screeching like an old lady. Not Because I'm . Yeager, just out of self-preservation!

AIRSPEED! ffs.

At that point WHO CARES what the automation is doing, should do, should theoretically do, was designed to do, did I read that FCOM chapter correctly, what's the SOP again?, etc...FLY IT! Make it do what you want, or get out of there.

Wasn't done. Predictable outcome.

But hey. Must be the automation.

[Girl17]

So.. which one is nicer to fly?

[Rooster69]

So.. which one is nicer to fly?

Flown both.....Boeing way more fun.