On the other hand, hand flying jet transports above 10,000 simply increases the workload of the PM, reduces capacity and reduces the safety margin.
I remember flying a 737-200 at 31,000 ft one fine day from Hamburg to somewhere in the Greek islands. F/O was a very young German pilot steeped in the automatics. The FMC tracks were via VOR's. I decided to keep my hand in for 10 minutes by manually flying (AP,FD and AT off) and tracking on each VOR in HSI mode. Beautiful weather.
Told the co-pilot what I intended. He looked shocked and said "In that case I had better put my shoulder harness on." This was obviously beyond his ken, poor
