Thread: Fly the box

I agree, at our line, no one wants to have the autopilot land. Our operating specification does not allow CAT III without the autopilot like AA does.

Originally Posted by Chogy

Highsea, I don't know how it is everywhere else, but 99% + of our landings are hand-flown from 3,000' on down. There's little difference in cost. If anything, a tight visual approach, hand flown, will save fuel vs. a longer ILS.

The company has to BEG pilots to autoland the airplane so as to keep it certified to do so. Our 737 fleet can't even do it. In other fleets, no one wants to give a landing to the machine unless circumstances demand it.

Difference between real-world and Boeing sales pitch, lol.

Thanks Chogy.

Originally Posted by highsea

Difference between real-world and Boeing sales pitch, lol.

Thanks Chogy.

No problem! The landing is probably the only part of the flight that represents any sort of challenge, and "makes or breaks" a flight, at least from the passenger perspective. It can be a bit frustrating, though, when an entire flight is graded only on a landing. We'd spend a lot of time and effort finding smooth, comfortable rides, execute different routes to avoid bad weather, have nice, gentle let-downs, only to have a crummy landing, and have people grumble or joke gently as they de-plane.

Another major frustration is to do everything perfectly, including the landing, only to be told "your gate is occupied." Within 1/2 an hour, all good feelings are gone. Passengers are understandably mad, and it isn't even our fault. Oh well.

No one has a lock on 100% nice landings. You might be on a month-long roll, but eventually you'll do a stinker, which chastens and humbles you.

Interestingly, I found that flying a transport was harder than flying a fighter. But that is flying around, not employing as a weapons system. So if rank-ordered, it'd look something like this...

- Flying around/landing in an F-15
- Doing regular 737 trips
- Employing an F-15

I've always thought a light-twin was one of the highest workloads in civillian flying. You have all the business of multi-engine complex airplane, and only one person on the job.

Chogy- I hear you on the landings. My first time in the 757 simulator, I porpoised down the runway about 4 times 75-100 feet in the air, lol.

Just to give the instructor a laugh, when I finally got the plane stopped I keyed the mike and said "Welcome to Boeing Field. Please use caution when opening the overhead bins, as some shifting of the bags may have occured during landing..."

Originally Posted by highsea

Chogy- I hear you on the landings. My first time in the 757 simulator, I porpoised down the runway about 4 times 75-100 feet in the air, lol.

Ha ha! That's why it can be so hard, you are jacked up so high in the air, there's little sense of the ground. Your butt is still 50 feet in the air when the mains touch down.