Ed Rasimus wrote:


But, we didn't go through the "mother may I" routine that I described
in the excerpt. We were "standardized" for sure, but we weren't
ritualized.

Cut me a bit of slack please.


Ed Rasimus

Of course...and I fully realize that your post was meant to show
up the humour in the situation (and was quite well done too).

Also I can readily understand how a pilot and a WSO who fly
together constantly on an a/c designed to be quite intuitively
flown could develop a working scenario where minimum chatter is
involved. But when a PIC and a Co-pilot are picked at random to
fly a large passenger airliner then procedures need to be
standardized so that everyone is using the same songbook. Toss in
a third crewman as used to be the case and you have a lot of
chances for disaster if they're not all on the same page. It may
sound silly but there's a really good reason for standardization.

Hell, most flying establishments have a whole section devoted to
'standards' alone.

Large airlines (and the military) don't pump millions into a
theory just for the hell of it.

Millions and millions of dollars are at stake, Airlines just
cannot take the same chances that the military can...Look at
TWA...one crash and the company bites the dust. The
'...whole...damned...company...' mind you, there's the matter of
some 230 people dying as well. And this one wasn't a matter of
'standards' but it's certainly possible that 'unstandard
operation' could (and has) cause just as disastrous a result.

Anyway, perhaps I shouldn't be trying to teach you anything but
you must admit that with all the possibilities that exist in a
large modern airliner's cockpit for misunderstanding that
anything that will lessen the possibilities is a good thing. You
must also admit that I have much more experience with this aspect
of flying than you do.
--

-Gord.