RE: Nature is pityless -- woman sucked out of plane.
April 19, 2018 at 3:45 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2018 at 3:49 pm by johan.)
I'm not familiar with Southwest's ops spec, but I would expect it dictates that so long as the autopilot is functioning normally and its use does not otherwise endanger the flight, it remains in engaged until short final or at the very least until the airport environment is reached. Even in a 20k ft emergency rapid decent, the autopilot will do a better job of it than the pilots could by hand.
Plus what I'm reading is that she was FO on this flight. I've not seen any reports that said she was pilot flying for that leg. And with her doing most of the radio work, I'm going to guess she was actually the pilot not flying during this event. Therefore the captain would have been doing the hard work of punching buttons on the auto pilot. ;-)
Plus what I'm reading is that she was FO on this flight. I've not seen any reports that said she was pilot flying for that leg. And with her doing most of the radio work, I'm going to guess she was actually the pilot not flying during this event. Therefore the captain would have been doing the hard work of punching buttons on the auto pilot. ;-)
