Anyone flown with an AoA indicator?

"Bob Moore" wrote in message
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"Dudley Henriques" wrote

AOA is optional equipment for GA and I understand the airlines have
done a study on it's use in large aircraft.

Most of us joining PanAm during, or just after Vietnam, had considerable
experience flying AOA and couldn't understand why the latest jetliners
were not so equipped. It soon became obvious that ALPA and the old WWII
bomber captains that it represented wanted nothing to do with modern
technology. This group rejected CVRs, GPWS, AOA and anything else that
would have required them to be retrained.

This group of pilots are held in high esteem by almost everyone except
those of us who had to fly with them. They had received minimal training
for their B-17 or C-47 job in the Airforce and only through the strength
of the union, barely made it through the jet transition.

They still (1960's) would fly a "raw data" ILS instead of using the flight
director. Most of them had no business in a jet airplane. PanAm crashed
a large number of their B-707s due to pilot issues.

Bob Moore

That's interesting. I know it's hard sometimes to wean pilots off those
steam gauges and into new technology. What was it one guy said the first
time he used an MFD? "Now I know how my dog feels watching TV" :-)

On raw data and the FD; It would seem prudent to me to have the guy flying
the approach on the FD with the other seat monitoring the raw data. I know
the one time I landed a DC8, (just a guest of the chief pilot of the airline
on a ferry flight into Alaska ) this was the procedure we used.
My understanding on AOA for you heavy drivers is that you actually have
preferred using a calculated approach speed for the GW rather than AOA
because the configurations and the weights vary so much.
I've seen a fairly recent report from Boeing discussing AOA with the majors,
but as of now, I think it's still VERY optional, and the MFD with AOA on a
side bar has to be specially ordered during the pre-sale spec meetings
between the line main office and Boeing.
Don't know about Airbus. Haven't heard anything there at all.
Dudley