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Answer :
It is not "hard" to fly the Boeing 747 or 777. The very early aircraft, say World War I and before, were hard to fly because they had stability and control problems. As aircraft design matured, airplanes were built with controls that gave them predictable handling. The military developed a standard for control response and when a designer was succesful at designing the controls, all pilots were happy with the "feel". All the modern airliners have good control feel. There are some differences such as tail mounted engines or under-wing engines. With under-wing engines, if the pilot adds power, the plane pitches up if power is reduced, the plane pitches down. Tail-mounted engines do not make these pitch changes. (The tail mounted engine design is expensive and inefficient and will probably not be used in the future.)
Another aspect of modern airplanes is the avionics. Some pilots have a very hard time learing all of the ways to control the plane through the flight management computer. It is like your computer at home. There may be several ways to do something, but any one will work. The flight computers are the same way. It is nice to know several ways to do something, but the important thing is that the pilot knows how to make the plane do what is desired and not inadvertantly cause it to do something else.
The bottom line is that you have to learn the procedures and techniques of flying a specific aircraft and put that knowledge into practice!
Hope this helps,
Dick Keyt |
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