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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Children of the Magenta Line

The video embedded below was posted on the AvSig online forum by a friend. It's a presentation by a senior American Airlines training Captain on the subject of automation dependency (a subject I've commented on before). For my friends out there who fly aircraft that are able to let the GPS navigator drive the autopilot – well, you really ought to invest the 25 minutes in watching this; every time he says "FMC", substitute "GPS".

Automation Dependency from Bruce on Vimeo.


8 comments:

Gary said...

Great video for all of us. I was waiting to see how long it would take to hear "fly the plane". Thanks for posting.

Frank Van Haste said...

I thought it was very worthwhile, Gary. I can really relate to to the presenter's "three levels of automation" approach, and I find it very helpful to drop down a notch (or two!) as things become more dynamic in the terminal area.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Frank

Geoff Nelson said...

That was great. Thanks for sharing. I like my autopilot for many different phases of flight, but I also select just certain modes when need to help with workload. I really appreciate this video.

Greg said...

Hey Frank, is there a way to privately contact you? I'm a controller at potomac tracon and would love to talk to you more about flying out of the DC area

Frank Van Haste said...

No problem, Greg. Shoot me an e-mail at frank(at)vanhaste.com and I'll reply with my mobile phone number.

And, Geoff, glad you found it useful. Thanks for reading & commenting.

Frank

Anonymous said...

I was present when this was filmed at the AA flight academy; I was a junior MD-80 F/O at the time. Additionally I was fortunate enough to have Capt. VanderBurgh as an instructor when I transitioned to the 75/76 program. Been looking for this for years and can't believe I finally found it. Thank you! Kyle

Frank Van Haste said...

Kyle, I'm happy that you found Capt. Van der Burgh's presentation here! It's made a strong impression on me, and left me spring-loaded NOT to ask, "What's it doing now?" but to turn the box off and fly the airplane.

Blue skies and tailwinds, Kyle,

Frank

Anonymous said...

Great video, thanks for sharing. Although to nitpick a little; "every time he says FMC, substitute GPS", this isn't correct. The GPS rarely flies an airliner if ever, it is the Flight Management Computer which computes a flight path based on programed waypoints and tunes appropriate pre-programmed navaids, these are given lateral navigation information from the Inertial Navigation Systems and vertical navigation by the altimeters and radio altimeters.