Original rant

Be very clear this is just a personal rant; it contains MY views, nothing else. To me it seems that we persist in following some very odd dogma. Life in an aeroplane is pretty simple in many ways: flying is still the same as when we learned - pull back on the stick and the houses get smaller. OK so Airbus have improved thing for us and the secondary effect is no longer that they get larger again but that we get TOGA and A/FLOOR, move the stick laterally and we get a roll rate demand. But flying is still flying. We don't need the Ops Manual or the NPs or the myths and legends or any of the bullshit.

From a legal point of view, we must adhere to the AFM, we would be wise to stick closely to the Limitations or else the machine might come unglued, from a point of view of standardisation, it would help if we all used the NPs but we don't need to. It says so on page 1: "the Captain retains the authority to vary procedures if and when circumstances dictate". With the advent of the FCTM, we now have the operating procedures in the FCTM and a bullet point outline in the Normal Procedures which far from being Procedures are actually Policy. The current revision of the NPs has removed much of the procedures. So how does non-compliance with the Mandatory Go-Around criteria get to be a Line Check fail?: Vol 1 2-1-1 says that "the Commander shall not permit any member of the flight crew to operate an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner..." Anyway 1000ft is too high to need to be stabilised at VAPP.

On top of that we have the Airbus myths and legends. Now some of these really are myths and legends, just listen to some of the trainers. Sure, on top of NPs, we also have custom and practice; we've always done it that way so why change. Maybe it makes it easier if you do stick with that old ways but you're under no obligation to do so. Where's the quality control in the new Loadsheet procedure that it so weak that we now need a Before Take Off checklist item to confirm completion? Who thought of the term ACKNOWLEDGED? That does not slip off the tongue for most of use and it seems the locals find it something of a tongue twister! If you need such a system, it should be implemented such that the Acknowledge function is embedded in INIT B and the MCDU/FM flags a missing key-press when the TO Config pb is pressed.

Where did popping up the PA pb every time you turn on the seatbelts in the cruise come from? I'm told it's Good Airmanship - blah! Suddenly we're at F350 in the cruise and, maybe because we've little else to do, it suddenly becomes important to check that the ISM is doing her job? The ISM is obligated to report to the Captain that the cabin has been checked; it says so at Vol 2 Pt 2 1-8-5. It's a legal requirement that the pax receive a Safety Briefing before take-off but do we pop up the PA pb to check that it's happening - I don't think so! Do we check that they have started the meal service? Maybe not!

And then there's that little gem of manually tuning LC during and approach to 07L or 25R. Why? "To fill in the blanks". Hmmm, do we randomly tune an ILS when we are making a VOR approach - no. How is LC going to help? Presumably all is going well prior to ToD when you formulate this master plan of manually tuning LC. Passing Limes, GPS Primary drops out. Shucks, we are down to Nav Accuracy High: well, we flew like that for years and crossed the Pacific many times. 25d NLG and Nav Accuracy drops to LOW, so we are now raw data, let's press on. 21d NLG turn right and the ILS fails, well I guess a really smart crew have SMT up for confirmation of the centreline and press on for a managed VOR. But alas SMT fails heading 040. So now tell me how you are going to use LC. Me: I'd turn right 073 and go-around. There's nowhere LC makes any sense.

Nor does it make any sense to ditch the Secondary F.PLN that has a return from Envar as you climb through F150 and autotune navaids that are doing a great job.

Our normal operation is becoming increasingly tainted with weird little customs and practices that are no such thing. Vol 1 tell us that we are "responsible for understanding and conforming to the contents of the operations manual at all times." What does that mean? FCOM 3 forms part of the suite of operations manuals. An engine fails at 500ft on approach, so does that line require me to complete the FCOM 3 procedure for an engine failure? Or go around to do it. But, hey, back up top, we noted that the Captain could vary the procedures.

Look like the Legals are just trying to stitch us up. Another flap retraction incident and a mandate to re-read the the PowerPoint presentation. But the crew knew the system inside out and still fluffed it. Why? The more rules that you write, the greater the risk that you take that what actually happens is that crew spend their time desperately searching for the rule that they have missed that will drop them in the guano. The more rules you have, the more chance that you will miss one. The NPs are fast becoming a script from a play, miss a line, the prompter drops his copy and the show stops. See para 1, it's just an aeroplane, fly it. That's a pretty compelling reason why Adverse Weather should be re-written as a standalone procedure that overlays the NPs. Right now it's everywhere. I tried that once, it was turned down. And while I'm on weather, oh, just read the Darkness comments!

And here's a weird one: aircraft depressurises - you'd like to squeeze every ounce of fuel to make filed destination but that would be the hardest bet as filed destination, and it alone, require you to carry alternate fuel! Divert to a CX on-line port anywhere nearby and ALTN not required. Go figure.

Anyway, how many N1 fan blades are there on a Trent? How did that ever get to be a reasonable question for a line check? Then there's a couple from the - er - tech quiz the guys do prior to their upgrades: state the fuel imbalance limits for an A340 and what's the formula for the aquaplane speed. Now this just shows where the C&T thinking is going: anything in the limitations section is fair game. Huh! So that somehow makes it ok to force pilots to learn utterly irrelevant data that is available in seconds? The more limiting A330 says that the limits "maybe exceeded without significantly affecting the aircraft handling qualities." The answer to this odd question must simply be "FCOM 3.01.28" and look it up; when is knowledge of such numbers ever going to be time critical and of such importance that the risk of a 3 type CCQ pilot using the wrong numbers is worth the risk? As for aquaplaning, presuming that you get the dimension right - you know, PSI and knots, not bar and mph - given that we operate in a region with significant rainfall and wet runways, you would therefore expect to see some advice in SPs, FCTM or V2P2 on the subject but there's not a lot. Care to ask SUB Tower for the depth of water on the runway? PEK don't even tell you the surface is icy!

Here's the latest bizarre training concepts; the need to know where the handcuffs now live. Hmmm, they were removed from the flight deck so that the sterile cockpit did not need to be breached in a potentially troublesome situation. The checker argument now goes that some ISMs do not know where the handcuffs are. Have you tried explaining this, given the different types, over the interphone? If the checkers have an issue with the ISM's technical knowledge, they should get onto the Safety School and ISD and fix the problem, not mandate more trivia for pilots. Ever been asked what the inboard sawtooth on the 'bus leading edge is for - no, thought not! Or the "advice" that taxiing in, the APU should be started as pass behind the tail of the aircraft parked immediately prior to your stand. Wow, a notional 60 seconds to start, you will now learn about the APU fault moments before you set the Park Brake. Why introduce a Just-In-Time element anywhere in the operation when the rest of the time, we aim to manage events in a timely manner?

Isn't it odd that Boeing/Airbus have gone to so much trouble and expense replacing the FE with a handful of silicon chips and now we, as pilots, have to replace those chips. The aircraft gives you a perfectly good visual aid synoptic of each system but, no, in CX we have to be able to draw that system ourselves. Any good scientist and, logically, knowledge worker such as a pilot, shouldn't spend time learning facts that are easily available in a manual. This also applies to fuel imbalance values and, actually, pretty much every value in the Limitations for 3 types and their different variants that we operate, that are automatically monitored by one of those silicon chips, which won't get bored, nod off and they do a better job of it than humans. Interesting that we have 6 green FCOMs and 2 white ops manuals, which contain very little airmanship (FCTM possibly excepted) so is it any surprise that we've drifted into teaching dry facts rather than operational flying skills? We (I accept some personal responsibility for this) may have re-written the NP/SPs but it seems that we failed to change the culture in the check and training department; all the old trivia is drifting back in. Sigh!