Robert M. Gary wrote:
Ron Natalie wrote:
Jim Macklin wrote:
If the autopilot is flying, use the autopilot console to fly
the airplane. Over-powering the autopilot is always BAD
technique. Many autopilots will disconnect if they sense a
problem which can include input on the control wheel.

Yep, caused an airliner to crash in Russia a few years back
(among other issues).

Ok, if you're going to bring up an incident tell the entire story. The
captains 15 year old son was at the controls at the time.

Yes, that was the cause of the AP disconnect. The 15 yo overpowered
the autopilot causing it to silently disconnect the aileron servos.
Neither the right seat pilot nor the captain standing behind noticed
this. When the airplane started roll subsequently they assumed they
had somehow commanded an autopilot-controlled hold entry. They
then allowed the bank to progress to 50 degrees.

This leads to an incipient problem you can have in a private aircraft
as well. Without sufficient power, the autopilot trying to maintain
altitude can drive the aircraft into a stall. It was finally at the
onset of the prestall buffeting that the copilot started to try to
recover, unfortunately while you can overpower an autopilot easily,
overpowering a 15yo holding the other yoke is not as easy.