Prior to 9/11 I was fortunate to ride the jump seat for take-off and landing on a couple of 744 sectors QF2 LHR-BKK and QF10 SIN-MEL. Each of these sectors carried 1 * SO. The QF2 LHR-BKK sector was interesting. When I entered the coughpit the Captain was in his rack with the SO occupying the LH seat. We were cruising at FL350 and about 1hr out of BKK. About 30 minutes from landing the FO briefed the arrival into BKK and suggested the SO hand fly the descent to around FL110. During the descent I was surprised at the level of coordination with control (attitude) / throttle (power) movement required to maintain the desired descent profile. As we approached FL110 the Captain appeared from his rack with a cup of coffee in hand. Upon reaching FL110 the FO took over from the SO with the Captain taking the LH seat from the SO. The FO then flew the approach and landing. The SO did say that it was rare to get the opportunity to hand fly the aircraft for that long and through the initial approach.
I do hope that your memory of this event is faulty, as what I’m reading is a terribly irresponsible lack of management by the captain, and a breach of a number of company rules.
It is standard for the rosters to finish at 30 minutes prior to top of descent, with ‘all on’ from that point. The briefing is not done until everyone is present. Any FO who failed to call me back prior ToD would not be operating home. Any captain who failed to be present for the brief, and then didn’t turn up until about FL110 would be demoted..if he was lucky.
The question is are there any restrictions (i.e. altitude) on when an SO can occupy LH / RH seats. Talking with the SO he had around 6,000+ hrs courtesy of the RAAF flying F111's, etc - so total experience wasn't an issue.
There have always been restrictions, but they have changed a lot over the years. When I first joined, I have feeling that it was as low as 1,500’...in any event it wasn’t high. That gave SOs a chance to fly with the aircraft fully configured, and also meant that their heads had to be planning all the way to touchdown. As you raise the limit at which they’ve got to be out of the seat, so their planning slowly disappears.
Over the years the restrictions crept higher. I don’t recall the stages, but now it’s FL200. At that level, none of them ever disconnect the autopilot, so it’s been a terribly retrograde step as far as their long term training is concerned.
But, there was one exception to these limits. There used to be an animal called a ‘senior Second Officer’. They weren’t necessarily any more senior than others, but they were actually landee...they were allowed to do take offs and landings. They haven’t existed for many years though. I was one, but for only one flight.
Second question - with the level of automation available combined with requirements on when and where the automatics need to be engaged how do the pilots ensure they keep up their hand flying skills. I seem to recall this may have been a contributory factor into the Asiana 777 SFO incident.
It is a now a very real problem. You have a number of groups within the pilot body. There’s those who have previously flow aircraft that either didn’t have much automation, or in which is wasn’t used a great deal. They developed strong flying skills, and whilst they do degrade without practice, they are a very solid basis. At the other extreme, the world is now starting to see people who have done very little actual flying, and who have spent their working careers in various forms of electric jets. They don’t develop flying skills in these aircraft, and they didn’t develop them beforehand.
Asiana is a quite amazing case...right up there with AF447. Basically the captain under training couldn’t fly worth a proverbial. He acknowledged that he was concerned before the flight about the likelihood of having to do a visual approach. But, this should be a bread and butter type of event. If you look at his background, he’d been an FO on the 747...but in an airline environment where FOs are basically SOs with an extra bar. He would have done very little flying in that seat. He then moved to the A320 for command. This is a very different aircraft, in which the system protects you from most of the nasties of the aviation world. Back to Boeing for a command conversion, and he’s worried about something that could appear on any flight. He reverts to Airbus to a degree, in that he’s turned off his flight director, and in an AB there is only one FD switch, and it puts the auto thrust into speed mode. The lack of thrust lever motion in an AB would have served to desensitise him to the thrust levers’ lack of motion in the 777. A Boeing pilot would have been expecting to feel the levers move as the auto thrust kicked in, and would just push them up himself if they didn’t.
