I am an active pilot who flies a Beechcraft King Air 350 almost every week, on 600 to 1,000 mile trips from NE Ohio to places like Key West, Oklahoma City and many other places where the boss needs to go.
I have seen first-hand how basic stick and rudder skills in aviation are deteriorating with the progression of automated systems in the cockpit. We always fly the King Air with a co-pilot, even though it is not legally required. I have flown with a lot of guys in the right seat who would be totally useless in any kind of emergency or if the magenta course line on the Garmin G1000 suddenly disappeared. One only needs to watch a few episodes of “Air Disasters” to see how this has affected even experienced airline pilots. Landing short of the runway at San Francisco, or riding a stalled aircraft from FL 330 (33,000 feet) all the way to a crash in the ocean are two PERFECT examples of highly paid commercial pilots who simply did not know how to fly an aircraft.
The King Air has an auto-pilot, and I use it a lot in cruise. But “Otto” and I have an agreement when it comes to flying instrument approaches. We “share“ those duties. He flies one and I fly one. That way I know that Otto can still fly an IFR approach and it makes sure I can still fly one, too.
We already have a generation of young engineers who don’t understand how to properly use the air brakes, don’t understand how to control slack and really have no understanding of train dynamics because they haven’t been taught about those things. They have only been taught what they need to know to get a train over the road with everything working properly. Let something go wrong and they are totally lost and unable to do any creative problem solving because they don’t even know what the problem is, let alone how to solve it.
Automation is not always a good thing.
