The attached link to American Airlines Captain Vanderburgh’s training lecture ’ Children Of The Magenta Line’ will I hope prove illuminating. Although dated in time, this lecture is every bit as relevant today as it was then. I think its particularly relevant to anyone trying to fly one of the airliners in MSFS, especially the A320. The main thrust of this lecture was that pilots in modern automated cockpits, which were designed to lower workload and enhance safety, were in many cases finding that the automation system was so task saturating them that they were unable to safely operate. The moral of the story is that in many situations it is safer to reduce the level of automation and hand fly the aircraft. In many incidents involving modern aircraft using FMC / MCDU systems the last words heard by the crew before the event were “now why is it doing that”. Now in the flight sim community we have the advantage of being able to hit the pause button and try to work out what is going wrong. But I believe that the most important contribution to the success of this simulator that Asobo can contribute would be to ensure that all the aircraft handle well in manual flight, and that the basic autopilot controls function reliably. That I believe should be their top priority.
In line with the recommendations of the video I always program one of my yoke buttons to switch off both the autopilot and auto throttle simultaneously so that I can take control. Enjoy Captain Vanderburgh:
I watched this video during a type rating course (not that the aircraft I was getting trained on at that time was all that automated), and indeed it is quite illuminating.
This said, outside the over responsiveness of controls and the requirement to bend the curves of sensitivity, there isn’t a whole lot more Asobo can do with manual flight. It is still important that they get the basic autopilot to work reliably as a matter of having a well-rounded product. The success of this simulator won’t be defined by a focus on manual flight (which exists in pretty much every flight sim out there), but on delivering the features that was intended to be there.
What would really be a contribution to the success of this sim is the SDK. Addon developers need this to further develop their aircraft systems. While relying on too much automation is undoubtedly bad for a pilot, I think I can speak for most people in saying that we would rather see the sim reach that level of automation than not for the sake of a good product.
It is an excellent video for RL pilots, especially if you operate coupled autopilot/nav systems. I heard on VATSIM:
Controller: Flight XYZ, why are you turning?
Pilot: Because that’s where the FMS is taking me
Controller: Well who’s the pilot-in-command?