The aim of the industry over the past 20 years or so has been to make the path to an airliner flight deck as easy and flexible as possibile in order to have more suitable candidates and hence have better flexibility when handling T&Cs.
One of the main points is to relieve the pilots from having to control the aircraft in manual flight as statistics have historically shown this is where people cock up big time.
If today we are talking about manual flying on the line like a great achievement and something that has to be highly and strictly regulated it is (also) because of the above reason.
The concept today is that aviation is for everybody and everybody can be trained to the required aviation standards but sticking to this will drive us to a not so distant future where autolands will become the norm even in cavok conditions, not to mentions the already available auto takeoffs.