Check airman
The general level of workload does not differ from the New York area to that in London or Paris and those who think it does are only fooling themselves.
What does differ is the level of experience that pilots enter the cockpit, generally to get into the right seat of a jet in the USA a pilot will have 1500+hours of turboprop time. In Europe the beanconters have pilots with 200 hours total time sitting in the right seat of a mid sized jet airliner.
The only way these people can get to grips with the aircraft is by strict and somewhat restrictive SOP’s that the management impose to try to contain the situation, this is breeding a new type of pilot who is reluctant to hand fly the aircraft even when the workload is low. The problem is that here people are now getting the into the left seat and have a marked reluctance to let the newer FO’s fly the Aircraft due to their own lack of hand flying experience.
As someone who thinks that mentoring new FO’s is part of a captains job I am deeply disappointed when FO’s tell me that even during ideal conditions captains have prohibited them from hand flying the aircraft.
I try to give all the FO’s as much scope as is reasonable to hand fly the aircraft and develope their manual flying skills but I feel I am fighting an uphill battle aganst automation dependency.
As a european pilot I have to reluctantly admit that the standard of pilotage this side of the Atlantic is falling behind that of the USA for the reasons I have given above.