If the jerks don't scan the instruments, they deserve what they get.

That rather extreme level of natural selection is fine if you're flying a C172 alone in a remote area where you're not going to hurt anybody else if you screw up. Airline passengers, in my experience, tend to expect a slightly higher level of safety and redundancy, so that if the humans in the front make a mistake the 400 people behind them don't just automatically 'get what they deserve'. That's why airlines put SOPs in place: to try to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, a simple screw-up doesn't develop in to a lethal situation. There are all sorts of things that are technically possible with any aircraft: however, just because an aircraft technically can do something doesn't necessarily mean it is good airmanship to do it.

 

Automation awareness is a significant issue in modern aviation safety. The most obvious recent example is OZ214: it should have been obvious that the A/T was no longer engaged, but two pilots with more than 20,000 hours between them didn't notice. This rather eye-opening incident from a couple of years ago also highlights how quickly a crew can become overloaded and lose situational awareness and awareness of the AFDS modes. Humility is an important quality in aviation: if you think it could never happen to you, it probably will. You can intercept the localizer in LNAV, but you can guarantee the one day it doesn't work will also be the day you get distracted at the crucial moment and don't notice it -- after all, it worked 5,000 times before, right? On the other hand, if you are on an intercept course in HDG SEL and you have LOC armed and verified, it will be the localiser you capture and not the LNAV path. It's just a simple way to mitigate against a screw-up.

 

 

You probably find that's the co pilots job to change the freq and handle the atc comms whilst the captain flies the aircraft

Well -- First Officers do get to fly the aeroplane sometimes these days -- it's not the 1950s! Regardless of who's flying, both pilots are still required to listen to the ATC communications, carry out tasks that fall within their own area of responsibility and check what the other chap/chapess is doing. The final stages of an approach are a high-workload time for the crew: the radios are often busy (so you're having to listen carefully for your callsign), there are rapid speed, altitude, heading and configuration changes going on which, particularly in a slippery, heavy jet with lots of inertia have to be thought about and anticipated and require both crew members to action. AFDS modes may be changing frequently and automatically, you may have a CDA to calculate, the cabin may be in touch, the company may be in touch, there are checklists to run, frequency changes to be made -- and that's before ATC do anything funky like switching you to another runway or keeping you high, or you have weather or terrain to worry about. There are lots of potential distractions, and it only takes a moment for one's attention to be diverted away and something can be missed or forgotten. Every week somewhere in the world someone lands without wheels for no other reason than they forgot to put them down -- if it's possible to miss that, it's possible to miss a few small green letters on the FMA.

 

As I say, as far as intercepting the localiser in LNAV is concerned I'm not saying you can't do it -- but many airlines strongly discourage it, and if something's in an airline's SOP you can guarantee it's there because of experience (i.e. somebody else tried it once and got in to bother). I've already set out the reasons why I think it's generally a good idea to use HDG SEL: I can't think of any good reasons for using LNAV. However, we can agree to disagree! The important thing is to be aware of the threat: as long as you know what the pitfalls of doing something a certain way are, you can go in to it with your eyes wide open (provided in the real world, of course, that it's not against your company's SOP).

The fmc will not fly any vectors, it's a point that in real life atc will give you a vector/headings. If your not using any atc you need to vector yourself onto the final approach. Use heading select and make sure your going to hit the right height for the ILS.

 

If this sounds to much, turn the aircraft using head select so your on a good path to intercept the final approach and in the fmc select the final approach first fix, it should be the next/top wp in the legs page,line select it and re enter it as the next wp, hit lnav and vnav again and your good to go. Other ways of doing it is like direct to.