Capt Bloggs,
pineteam,
The subject should not be seen as hand flying or not, pilots should hand fly; instead it questions why some views believe that more manual flight will improve expertise required to manage different situations.
Opportunistic flying in low workload conditions can improve confidence, self esteem, and refresh existing skills in that operation. However, this is unlikely to improve the expertise required in other flight areas or managing abnormal situations.
Although GA should be a normal operation, in reality it is abnormal due to low occurrence, not failure. Hand flying an approach and landing is unlikely to improve GA; hand flying a GA could, but also improved aircraft / systems.
A concern is if regulators or operators believe that the purpose of hand flying is to improve expertise, they risk complacency - they have responded to the perceived threat. Many safety 'interventions' are based on variable accident investigation and reporting, causal allocation, and misjudged recommendations.
Perhaps 'automation dependent' operators realise this and have other training methods to enhance expertise, particularly cognitive skill, situation awareness and decision making.
PK, yes inappropriate correlation, not cause or effect, but 'related' - associated; instruments and flying aircraft.
'…
pilots have all of the skills … '. Accidents suggest otherwise, not weak manual skills, but inadequate situation assessment and choice of action.
An alternative view of manufacturing might be that modern aircraft have been designed for the primary task which is heavily automated - safer, but sufficient for manual flight, but not necessarily with the same accuracy depending on the situation; no AP, FD, RNAV could require a Pan call.