There are indeed some impressive male members being waved about on this thread....Austronoughts notwithstanding, let us not forget that in days gone by there was no RVSM, a lot less traffic and of course Nav accuracy was measured in miles rather than meters...so let’s dispense with the BS shall we?
The degradation in manual handling skills is real, and we can lay the blame at the doorsteps of the safety managers, aircraft manufacturers and the bean counters.
I keep myself in regular practise but am forbidden from removing the FD and A/T, and yet recently I was required to operate a 77F from HKG to home base 8hrs distant with no operable A/T system. Amazingly some safety manager might say, it was no issue flying with manual thrust, who’d have thought?
Lets be realistic here, most of these policies are written by the non flying troglodytes who through a combination of envy, stupidity and pure inadequacy have collectively decided that they know more about aviation than the aviators....it’s up to you to stand up and reverse the trend.