If GPS and ADF disagree, I surely with the GPS
My main PPL / IMCR instructor said he would trust the ADF 
but if she speaks nonsense, the magic is soon gone
Well, there are AMCs (acceptable means of compliance) 
If he has a point, he should make it in a nice way, and with arguments to back up his claims
The problem is that this is one of numerous professions which strongly self select on character profile. Airlines realised this a few decades ago and they try to weed out those types, but clearly they can survive in little corners of jet transport. I know of others like this. I know of one who hangs out in the GA sphere too whose behaviour in beyond anything acceptable.
Overlay approaches.
In the public transport sector if an approach is an ADF approach that that is the primary radio aid to be used and the ADF has to be working to fly that approach.
However if you have the data for that ADF approach in the FMC database you can use the FMC to do all the work including coupling it to the autopilot in LNAV & VNAV providing the ADF raw data is displayed on the panel in front of you.
What you can’t do is put a few user entered waypoints for the approach in the FMC and fly the approach.
I can see no reason that the IFR approved Garmin kit can’t be used the same way.
Interestingly GPS based RNAV/VNAV approaches are flown with the FMC VOR/DME update de-selected as these are pure GPS based procedures.
Peter wrote:
My main PPL / IMCR instructor said he would trust the ADF
Good luck with that when there are thunderstorms around. As someone wisely mentioned if the 2 instruments are that far off its time for a time out to review the situation. Personally I ck the Raim before a really important approach. While in the app and the GPS degrades it will tell you anyway. When your ADF needle wanders off how do you know it other than cross ref with a diff instrument?
Flyer 59
Your use of accident statistics is misleading as looking at all models of the B737 brings into play some very old 100 & 200 series aircraft that have found there way into the less reputable operators in darkest Africa and South America.
Airbus products are too new ( and maintenance complicated ) to have yet fallen into that hands of these people.
A few years back I was standing on the ramp at Banjul looking at two B737-200’s and remarked to the ramp agent that these aircraft must take a lot of looking after, he replied that they had a mechanic come up from Lagos once every six weeks to spend a day looking after them…………….. When I was a mechanic at BA this type got the very minimum of two hours maintenance a night.
I think if you compare the B737NG and A320 family aircraft you will find the numbers much closer !
Was it Abe Lincon who said something about lies, dam lies and Statistics ?
C210_Flyer wrote:
While in the app and the GPS degrades it will tell you anyway.
It should, but I have flown with enough aftermarket GPS installation that won’t. At least not on the HSI. No OFF flag, no warning light, nothing. The needle will just remain centered and your GPS receiver on the other side of the panel will show a message light. That message light should be physically repeated next to the HSI, but I have flown with enough airplanes that didn’t have that light.
Even our bizjet installation will only show you an amber “MSG” or “INTEG” annunciator somewhere in the corner of the screen that is easily missed. To see what that message means, you have to press the “MSG” button on the FMS and then the FMS screen will show you something like “NO GPS POSITION – DR MODE”. No big red-and-white OFF flags or big red “X” across the EHSI like with the ILS.
A_and_C wrote:
I think if you compare the B737NG and A320 family aircraft you will find the numbers much closer !
I believe pilots’ opinion on A versus B comes right after the pattern of the carpet in the decision making matrix of the airline purchasing department. A and B do not build airplanes for pilots which actually makes GA aircraft a lot more interesting in that regard.
I think if you compare the B737NG and A320 family aircraft you will find the numbers much closer !
Of course, you are right. But if would take only 737s and A320s built from 1987 until today, Airbus and Boeing would be very close. There is absolutely no statistical evidence that the 737 is safer than the A320/family, rather the contrary.
In that case for that installation the 25000 hr pilot was right. I thought the 430w tells you the system is degraded with more than a message. I have it on the G600 dont really look at the 430W. I do occasionally but more focused on the PFD and MFD during the approach.
Flyer 59
I don’t think you could slide a cigarette paper between the accident statistics of comparable Airbus & Boeing aircraft but the Airbus approach to automation channels the pilot mindset along those lines and makes it very much harder to take a more manual solution to a changing situation. The Boeing is far more flexible in the fact that you can move between conventional and automated flight with far greater ease.
While the Airbus is easier to fly in the northern european highly controlled ATC environment in less developed ( some might say chaotic) ATC environments the flexibility of the Boeing is a distinct advantage.
There is little doubt that the Airbus approach to automation has isolated the pilot from what the aircraft ( and the other pilot ) is doing, you don’t see the throttles moving and you can’t see the other pilots control inputs on the Airbus. This has required a rethink in pilot training with the young players studiously following the changes in FMA,s to the detriment of monitoring the flight path of the aircraft ( this is happening with Boeing too but to a lesser degree ).
Boeing have tried to keep the cockpit more conventional with more visual clues as to what the aircraft ( and the other pilot ) is doing, this results in more physical clues to aircraft mode and performance. Humans are very poor at monitoring machines ( especially very reliable ones) and the more physical clues you can get the better.
I very much doubt that a Boeing would have been stalled in from FL330 by a pilot holding the controls full nose up simply because the other pilot would have known very quickly the selected control position.
Sorry, but IMHO those are opinions you cannot support with facts. By coincedence I know the head of A330 training at a major german Airline well, let’s see what he says about that. I am not qualified enough to discuss this in depth.
What i do know is that when you press the priority button the computer tells you who has control of the aircraft. “Priority Left”. And there have been B757s and 767s out of control, by the way, that crashed.
The statistics do not support that Boeings of any generation are safer than Airbus.
http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
