"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Bertie the Bunyip writes:

No, they aren't. that problem was recognised over twenty
years ago and
we hand fly whenevr possible, fjukktard.

You may hand fly, but many do not. Some countries are
producing airline
pilots with extremely limited skills,

You didn't have that geographic qualifier when you made your
sweeping statement. It's true that a few countries are
using ab initio training to breed their own pilots, but
that's a tiny minority.

and yet they still manage to fly the aircraft, most of the
time.

Another weasel-worded qualifier. "Most of the time" is not
good enough. "Our wings do not fall off most of the time"
would not be good enough, either. One sufficiently bad
pilot screw up = one smoking hole.

Every airline pilot with whom I've discussed automation
makes it a point to occasionally do a little hand-flying
just to maintain those skills. And some airport approaches
are best done hand-flying.

-- John Mazor
"The search for wisdom is asymptotic."

"Except for Internet newsgroups, where it is divergent..."
-- R J Carpenter