To what degree do airline ops specs preclude hand flying?

Question

I retired in 1999. I'm curious to what degree typical airline ops specs now discourage or prohibit doing what I used to do as a matter of course insofar as hand flying.

For example, I usually hand flew the aircraft until leveling at the first cruise altitude (FL290 or FL310 on fully loaded 747-100/200 aircraft). For the step climbs as fuel was burnt, I nearly always disengaged the autopilot and did the climb manually. At the top of descent I clicked the autopilot off, and I flew approaches manually.

Many of my fellow crew members thought it odd that I did so much hand flying, but as I would explain when asked, I didn't get to the 747 until I was 50 and didn't get to its left seat until a couple of years later, and I wasn't about to forego any of the fun.

None of the hand flying I did was prohibited by our ops specs of the time. My question is: to what degree, if any, do current ops specs discourage or prohibit the hand flying I did?

It's good to see that hand flying skills are still in use. A great display of stick and rudder skills. — Simon, Jan 04 '16 at 08:37

score 13 · Answer 1 · edited May 03 '16 at 16:34

13

There are no Ops Specs that preclude hand flying, however company policy and operational considerations do in specific situations:

Level flight within RVSM airspace
Cat III approaches (and I believe Cat II approaches)
High workload, critical phases of flight (company specific policies here)

The FAA even came out with a SAFO not too long ago recommending that pilots do more hand flying during periods of low workload (and during training) with the goal of maintaining hand flying proficiency.

edited May 03 '16 at 16:34

reirab

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answered Jan 04 '16 at 00:12

Lnafziger

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i thought using the autopilot in level flight within RVSM was required by regs – rbp Jan 04 '16 at 13:42
@rbp It is, and falls under "operational considerations". ;-) – Lnafziger Jan 04 '16 at 20:47

score 12 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '16 at 15:31

My company only mandated autopilot use during monitored approaches (all cat II approaches and cat I below RVR 2400 for high minimums captains) and for compliance with RVSM ops.

I typically hand flew at least up to 10,000 feet but often up into the flight levels. On descent into fields with a lot of vectoring I usually disconnected the autopilot on our final vector to intercept the approach. Going into less busy places I often disconnected the autopilot when descending out of 10,000 feet.

I also tried to get in one raw-data (no autopilot, no flight director) ILS approach every trip I flew to keep those skills up.

To what degree do airline ops specs preclude hand flying?

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