> I don't see the problem here. The pictures in the>link look interesting. If you don't want to fly anything>automated, just download one of the hundreds of old planes>available for free. >Yep, looks like the airlines are getting something more sophisticated, that looks close to the Garmin 1000's & Avidynes we see in Cessna 172's & the Cirrus.. :D But what the heck, as GA & experimentals, we had better moving map GPS's before they did, and even our newest XM Satellite weather moving map overlays are somewhat more sophisticated for long range weather, than their onboard radar.You'd be surprised, as small plane flyers, how we often get the good stuff first! :DL.Adamson -- a real fan of GA glass

I think it is purely subjective approach assuming everything will always work OK.It indeed becomes easier and easier to fly jetliners nowadays, example of that could be unified training scheme for the crews of Airbus family aircraft.This assumption becomes totally invalid when indeed things go wrong.Then it takes a lot of airmanship to get several hundred thousands pounds of iron back to mother earth.Out of many out there see the example of miracle landing at Sioux City Airport years ago.This flight was doomed right at the moment it lost all of its hydraulics, hence flight controls. yet, the experienced and knowledgeable crew got it back to the runway minimizing death toll of this accident.This is why, IMHO, we'll see crews on board for many, many years to come - just to keep a bit of an optimistic note here :-wave ThanksDom

It is this trend that was a factor in my want to work in the bush field rather than the airline field. When I was a kid, I used to see the airline pilots, sharply dressed, warmly greeting the passengers and I'd look in the cockpit and see all the levers and guages and thought it would be so cool. Now the pilots are locked in a vault and I've learned over the years that they don't fly, but babysit George. I've lost any thoughts of joining the airlines with my commercial license (I should have it by the end of the year, and my CFI and II over the next year if all goes well).----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

Your experience as a kid was similar to mine. I first rode in a TWA 707 in 1968. I don't remember much of that experience other than the "Up, Up and Away in My Beautiful Balloon" theme song playing at the TWA terminal at JFK and the red seats on the plane. The experience that really stuck with me, however, was the Pan Am 707 ride from RAF Mildenhall to McGuire AFB, NJ in 1972. That experience was pinnacle in my love of flying. I did not look at a cockpit until I saw a picture of a 707 cockpit later that year in a library book and too noticed all the levers and gauges and was awestruck. Unlike you, however, I am not a pilot, although I acquired 10 hours as a student pilot in a Cessna 172 back in 84. I never soloed, the money ran out due to the fact that I was a poor college student at the time. But, yes, the airline-pilot job has turned, for the most part, into a system's monitoring occupation. Best of luck finishing your commercial license and the CFI and II!RH

As an IT tech that supported over fifty HP printers with a 98%+ uptime, ten Kyoceras with a 75% uptime and a single Lexmark with a higher downtime than uptime (although that was a cheap multi-function device), I think we must know two different Hewlett Packards... ;)Ian P.(Who only prints the critical pages from large manuals...)

The only point I feel worth interjecting here is that almost every aviation related accident eventually boils down to human error. These days, it is highly unlikely that the hardware will fail although yes, sometimes it does. Often because a mechanic connected a part incorrectly, or left a tool somewhere it shouldn't be.The highest cause of aviation fatalities is STILL controlled flight into terrain. Most commonly in aircraft that are only fitted with small, simple, autopilots or none at all.An entirely automated aircraft could land safely after a depressurisation event - simply because the computer doesn't care that it is not breathing any more. A computer doesn't have six seconds to put on an oxygen mask.The majority of near misses, incidents and crashes when autopilots are involved are caused by incorrect use of the autopilot by the crew.All of the statistics above with the exception of the depressurisation one are from Flight International magazine. Personally I'd still rather have someone on the flightdeck "babysitting George", but that's mainly because I'd like it to be me!!! :-hahCheers folks...Ian P.

I agree that was a crazy statement about HP printers. We have about 40 deskjets and 10 laser HPs in service and they never need anything other than paper and ink. Zero printer failures.Noel

What kind of HP printers are they? Newer or older? Injet or deskjet?

Deskjets are injkets... I assume you mean LaserJets?The office currently has around eight 10-year-old HP LaserJet 4MV A3 printers. These have had a few problems, which has dragged the reliability down, but for the last five years or so, they have been flawless. They are currently running at around twice life expectancy on number of prints.The majority of the other printers are LJ4050DTNs with duplexing and high capacity second trays, which are very, very, close to the magical 100% uptime. They are between 1 and 5 years old and so far we have had one failure. We have regularly maintained them as per the manuals, but I'm talking local maintenance, replacing feed rollers, etc., not calling out engineers.The two we expected to fail very quickly were the DesignJet 1050C roll-fed plan plotters. We absolutely hammer those things to death and so far, in five years, the only failure has been an after-market hard disk drive which needed replacing. That slowed the printer down, but didn't stop it running. They paid for themselves two years ago in reduced maintenance costs over their thermal printer predecessors and are still showing no sign of slowing down.The DeskJet 1250C on Telecoms is... well, we don't know how old it is. We inherited it, as did the office we had it off. The only problem we've had with that is that everyone uses the LJ4500 colour laser instead of it these days and the ink cartridges dried up!!! Quick cartridge change and it is now used for A3 colour, as we don't have an A3 colour laser.HP city much? All the PCs, notbeooks and servers are HPs as well. Wish they were as reliable as the flippin' printers. :-(Straying vaguely back onto topic, the largest manual I have printed in full so far is the Reality XP GNS530 one... More accurately known as the real Garmin GNS530 manual. That is something of a tome and I had to back-print one page at a time manually feeding the printer (a Kyocera FS1700N) because the paper tray was jamming. Pity me! :-hahCheers,Ian P.

Gents:Lets take a step back. For many, the romanticism of a square jawed captain walking in slow motion to the adoration of the passengers in the terminal, flanked by his crew, boarding a 747-100 and flipping hundreds of switches and checking hundreds of gauges, handflying and wrestling the queen though the skies by hand while drinking a cup of coffee with the other is the yardstick by which aviation is judged.To that I say (with no disrespect of course), get over it. Aviation, is nothing more than a mode of transportation much like your car. Are you any less of a driver or is driving less exciting because you have power steering, power windows, fuel injection, power brakes, a navigation system and DVD player with LCD screen? Or, maybe you long for the days of struggling to turn the steering wheel, pumping the brake in hopes the car will stop, stopping by a gas station to ask for directions while having the kids drive you crazy in the back due to boredom, or having to warm the car up in the morning in fear of cracking your engine block? You would embrace technology there because it makes life easier for you right?Well, all those computers you see in todays super EFIS flight decks are not there so you can miss the romanticism of flying. They are there to: 1. Make the pilots jobs easier, 2. Take the workload off of the pilots. 3. Help cut down on pilot error, 4. more technology, means more tools at the pilot's disposal. The idea the more technology confuses or somehow confounds the pilot is hogwash.The technology that you see appearing in today's flight decks are put there after exhaustive consultations with pilots. These are the things that the average line pilot flying 4 legs a day or 10 hour transatlantic flights want to see. These are the tools that reduce the pilot workloads being that they must to it for a LIVING as opposed to a romantic simulated hobby. At the end of the day, I would doubt that the 787 avionics design team and test pilots considered how MSFS hobbiests would feel.Gauges and procedures don't make you a pilot (a boiler room mechanic looks at gauges and procedures all day, but he ain't no 747 captain)...the ability to fly the airplane, be it a piper cub or a A380, makes you a pilot. If flying for you is reduced to gauges and procedures then that is analogus to love being reduced to internal chemical reactions and brain wave changes. Flight comes in all iterations, all facets, pulleys and levers or triple redundant fly by wire. It comes in ancient gauges or 15" LCD screens. It comes at 80 kts and it comes at Mach 3. It comes at 500 feet and at Flight Level 430. It comes built in your home garage and at a multibillion dollar plant in Seattle or Teluise. I leave you with this. Unless your bid packet greets you with: IAD-SJC-IAH-SAT-IAH or EWR-FLL-EWR-FLL-BOS or CLE-MCO-CLE-FLL-IAH three times a week....you probably won't understand how much one can come to LOVE AUTOMATION. Sitting at a desk flying a few hours a week whenever you please gives one the wrong perspective as to the direction that aviation is taking.So at the end of the day. That pilot sitting in flight deck programming an FMC, punching in data into the EFIS system and doing a redundancy check on the FBW is no less of a pilot than his father who toiled as Second Officer on the "slaveship". (B727-200 - and if you were ever a 2nd officer on one, you know exactly what I mean).Mike T.

Hehe! That would be interesting. If someday we have real aircrafts with computer pilots, then I guess it would be the end of flight sim as we know it.Now, if aircraft companies begin to use more common avionics, then cross training would be easier, wouldn't it? Think of the money saved in training, maintenance, and inventory control.David>Automation has a serious downside. Aircraft of the same model>flying for the same airlines have signifigant differences in>avionics. If a pilot is used to the bells and whistles he/she>and other competent crew members can usually fly without them>well, but what if they climb into an "Atari Ferrari" setup>without many hours of operation? There have been a>degradations in safety rather than increases in the past when>incidents were created by pushing the wrong button, typing the>wrong thing or nudging the yoke being sufficient to disenguage>the autopilot. There were smart guys designing those systems,>are you so sure pitfalls are being avoided this time?>>"You are on board Microsoft Airways flight 720 to Burbank.>Notice I did not say 'This is your Captain speaking', because>this aircraft has no captain, or cockpit crew of any kind. To>forestall the possibility of pilot error, all of Microsoft>Airline's flights are operated by onboard computers. So sit>back and enjoy your flight knowing that nothing can possibly>go wrong...>>go wrong...>>go wrong..."

Ian, an Airbus representative could not have said it better!RH

Nice long post. However, I think you are missing the point of the thread. I dont think anyone is complaining that things are getting easier for pilots, but being too easy in the future of flight sim. When it comes to more about punching buttons and entering data to simulate current real world flying in big aircraft and not really ever flying the darn thing. I know when I fly the heavies 98% of the flight Im just handling the radio, entering data for the next waypoint, etc. Probably why I mostly fly aircraft from 1950 on back most of the time. The default Vimy for example can keep a person pretty busy especially when flying around hilly areas. Scott

Well, maybe I don't understand the point. The original poster said he needs "gauges and procedures" to make him feel good about flying. My point simply was that "gauges and procedures" does not a pilot make; either in the real world or in MSFS. A EFIS cockpit has never prevented a pilot from disconnecting the autopilot and handflying the aircraft all day long. At that point you can hand fly the aircraft, navigate by charts, heck you can whip out your sextant and navigate by the stars if you wish...what's stopping you from doing so?EFIS flight decks don't strap you to the seat, turn themselves on, disconnect flight controls and fly themselves with the pilot held hostage at gunpoint by the computer! Don't like em? Simply turn 'em off and there you have it you've reduced a B747-400 to a B747-100 with fancy gauges and no more....or am I still missing the point?Mike T.Mike T.

Very very true and a very good point. When I do slip into a heavy I don't use the GPS or any other automated form of navigation. I still use VOR navigation. But, is that how a real pilot would navigate his 747? Maybe if the other instruments are failing to work. Does a 747 pilot not use his auotpilot for flights? Kinda doubt it no matter how bored he gets. I guess the point I am making is that the more sophisticated flight becomes, in order to simulate real world procedures, there will be less and less "flying" and more and more number punching. And who knows, maybe in time there will be less of that too. I do think that eventually FS will make ATC more sophisticated in order to give the virtual pilot more to do. Speed restrictions, heading changes to avoid other aircraft, for example. Honestly I don't see how virtual pilots can only fly the big jets as I have seen some state. But to each their own. scott