Confusion about when it's my navigation, and when it's ATC

Jim Carter writes:

So you are really using your home computer as a procedure and systems
simulator and not a flight training tool.

I use it for both. When I fly a 737-800, there's a much greater
emphasis on systems and procedures. When I fly a Baron 58, there's a
much greater emphasis on flight training itself. I use the Baron for
pattern practice, but the 737 for complex navigation and ATC practice.

I will agree that learning
systems and procedures are part of the flight training process (or any
training process that involves automation), but they are not as big a
part of the overall training as you seem to believe.

I think that depends hugely on what type of flying you intend to do.
For airline pilots, systems and procedures seem to be the lion's share
of what they do. Actually flying the plane is becoming increasingly
incidental.

I say that because
of your devotion to the idea that you really are doing exactly the same
thing as a professional pilot actually flying an aircraft along the same
routes.

Exactly the same thing? I think not. But I come very close.

There are a lot of freewill decisions that still take place in the
cockpit and those decisions can not be simulated.

I make free-will decisions, too.

However, in practical commercial aviation, the idea is to reduce free
will to a minimum. Free will does not yield economical and
low-maintenance flight. Flying exclusively by the numbers with a
computer does. Airlines would probably love to dispense with pilots
entirely.

If it were considered safe, reliable, or even desirable to
automate the entire process (as a systems simulator provides) then there
would be no flight training requirements because there would be no
pilots.

That time will come. Their presence even today is increasingly as a
back-up. It's already possible to fly aircraft from gate to gate
without a pilot, although such systems have not actually been deployed
commercially, as far as I know.

True flying is involves much less systems integration and
systems management than you seem to believe.

Maybe in a Cessna, but not in commercial aviation.

My point to this post is that you seem to have the incorrect idea about
systems management and procedure memorization being the most significant
part of operating an aircraft -- that's not the way it is for the large
majority of people who fly.

Do you fly large jets for an airline, or small aircraft?

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