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737 & "Marrying the Bugs"

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I do it when I'm flying for the reasons already mentioned and its become a habit.
(also, there's no heading hold button on the 737's I've flown)

However, I don't do it when I am monitoring. Our policy is when the autopilot is on, the flying pilot operates the MCP so I don't touch it. Occasionally I have to sit on my hands since its my habit, but I try to leave it alone.

Its a technique and I don't push my techniques on to others. If they like it they'll adopt it, if they don't its their choice.
 
When you're 3 hours from land and 30 minutes from the next waypoint but the plane begins a turn you don't want, then you'll wish the bug was aligned with your current heading. Maybe a nav failure, most likely operator error. Perhaps this is left over from INS days or earlier, but I think most still consider it good airmanship.

Or maybe I just like minutia.
+1

I've had this happen 3 or 4 times. No big deal with me if the other guy doesn't want to synch them.
 
As long as the Auto Pilot is engaged only the flying pilot should be messing with the heading bug, with the Auto Pilot off then the non-flying pilot should turn the heading bug.

So I do agree with you that many FO are very anal.

My pet peeve, is FO's whose hands hover over a switch or lever in anticipation of your call.

Example I have flown with a few FO's who will raise there hand to near the auto throttle switch, way before I call for "auto throttles engage" during the T/O roll.

or, FO's who rest there hand on the flap handle in anticipation of a flap change call.

The way I look at it is that the flap handle is not an arm rest.
 
For most, it is just a habit to have them synced up. Of course, it is also a pretty good habit to have. I had a buddy flying with me who didn't sync it up alll the time and when told to turn right to a heading, the plane turned left when he hit heading select because he had left the heading bug on an old heading.

I do get what you are talking about. There are many who have to be tinkering with something every second. I second the annoyance with the guy who sets an expected heading just to have the other pilot sync the bug because he wasn't paying attention.
 
I had a buddy flying with me who didn't sync it up alll the time and when told to turn right to a heading, the plane turned left when he hit heading select because he had left the heading bug on an old heading.

That made me chuckle.
 
I had to at the time to because you could see the "what the hell is the plane doing" look on his face when it happened.

Easy correction, easy learning experience.
 
"2. Another good one is to be 1 number off on speed and/or heading. Trust me, it will annoy the hell out of them and you'll get a good laugh."

God that's the funniest s**t in the world!
 
It's actually a safety of flight issue. What if ATC all of a sudden said "fly your present heading for traffic" and you had your heading bug many degress off your current heading and you then pushed your heading button on the MCP? Your a/c would take a sudden turn to follow the off the nose heading bug. This is a safety issue as you could potentially turn toward your conflicting traffic and you could upset the passengers with the sudden turn.

It actually is an issue of poor design. You should be able to push the heading slew knob to instantly sync the heading bug -- like in every other airplane built since 1985.

PIPE
 
It's actually a safety of flight issue. What if ATC all of a sudden said "fly your present heading for traffic" and you had your heading bug many degress off your current heading and you then pushed your heading button on the MCP? Your a/c would take a sudden turn to follow the off the nose heading bug. This is a safety issue as you could potentially turn toward your conflicting traffic and you could upset the passengers with the sudden turn.


Given. But if you get in the habit of turning the heading bug to the desired heading BEFORE pushing HDG select, no problem. Just pushing HDG without knowing exactly where the bug is, (even if you married them up only 2mins ago they might be off some) never made sense to me.
 
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