pineteam;
I agree with your sentiments entirely . I recall a DC10 accident from many years ago ; this particular aircraft had a known autothrottle defect ; it would not hold the commanded speed . On a night approach to a short(ish) contaminated runway , it maintained VRef +20 all the way down finals . The Captain did not disconnect A/T , the jet landed hot and inevitably aquaplaned off the end of the runway into the river at the end and broke in two ... Fortunately all survived ( as i recall ) .
The accident report stated that the Captain was simply too afraid to take manual control of the thrust because he hadn't done it for a very long time . No excuse for that ; but a rare anomaly . In those days , the Atlantic Baron types were pretty good at handling their classic aircraft ..
Unfortunately , in these days of RVSM/RNP/ANP/TCAS etc etc and a crowded airspace at most international destinations , the situation does not lend itself easily to manual flying as we used to know it . Modern aircraft are designed to be flown by the automatics . Doing anything else seriously overloads the monitoring capabilities of the PM --trying to watch your flying like a hawk , making mode selections , handling ATC stuff / frequency changes while also looking out for other traffic . He's a busy boy / girl ..In addition , the flight data Big Brother is also busy reporting your every move back to base--in real time .The result ? Too many people have forgotten how to FLY .
My suggestion years ago was for the company to buy a Pitts special or something similar and roster everyone to go and have some hands on fun once a month . Of course , that idea got nowhere .