What NTSB has now said is that Auto-throttle has not 2 but 5 modes. Im not a pilot so all I knew of was 2. That may be a combination of different auto-pilot modes combined with auto-throttle modes.
But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing. As in, a mode that would actually use thrust vs elevators to maintain airspeed.
NTSB also revealed that course corrections were being done not at the latest moment of 500 feet, but at 4000 feet 2.5 minutes before landing the plane was off course, in which case supervision, and correction would have been appropriate in a training scenario.
I hate to draw conclusions like this, but in today's modern aircraft pilots only fly about 20-30 mins of a flight, takeoff and landing at most with autopilot managing most of the rest under normal conditions.
The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot.
NTSB revealed that several modes on autopilot and autothrottle were being cycled in the last 2.5 minutes of the Asiana descent perhaps indicating a reluctance to hand-fly the plane and an over-reliance on automation.
Any commercial pilot that cant hand-fly a 777 on a perfectly clear day at SFO should never see a commercial cockpit again.
> But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing.
I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. It's true that the flight was probably doomed the moment the autopilot was turned off, but it's not because the auto-throttle was in the wrong mode. It's because the pilots apparently didn't actually know the basics of how to fly an airplane.
> The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot.
(a) Real flight simulators are expensive (cost is an order of magnitude less than a real airliner, but still in the millions, and they require skilled operators to put the pilots through their paces),
(b) As I understand it, commercial pilots get paid on the basis of a rather paltry salary, topped up to a much higher rate per flying hour. So there's a strong wage incentive for them to jump in the cockpit of a real plane as fast as possible and get their experience that way rather than spending lots of time training in the simulators.
(c) Modern airliners spend a lot, or even most, of their time on autopilot. Which is not "the plane flies itself" -- it's more like a very complicated cruise control system in a car: you still need to observe and monitor what's going on around you and periodically change some settings governing the vehicle's behaviour. (Just as cruise control won't save you from a bend in the road or an idiot on the other side of the highway crossing the central divider, autopilots need constant supervision.)
But this is not "hand flying". Hand flying mostly comes down to take-off, landing, and brown-pants moments, which is a small fraction of the time a long-haul jet spends in operation. And most commercial airlines are going to take a dim view of pilots who spill the drinks in business class by playing at being a stick-and-rudder hero.
But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing. As in, a mode that would actually use thrust vs elevators to maintain airspeed.
NTSB also revealed that course corrections were being done not at the latest moment of 500 feet, but at 4000 feet 2.5 minutes before landing the plane was off course, in which case supervision, and correction would have been appropriate in a training scenario.
I hate to draw conclusions like this, but in today's modern aircraft pilots only fly about 20-30 mins of a flight, takeoff and landing at most with autopilot managing most of the rest under normal conditions.
The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot.
NTSB revealed that several modes on autopilot and autothrottle were being cycled in the last 2.5 minutes of the Asiana descent perhaps indicating a reluctance to hand-fly the plane and an over-reliance on automation.
Any commercial pilot that cant hand-fly a 777 on a perfectly clear day at SFO should never see a commercial cockpit again.