Originally Posted by
Checkboard
It's perfectly normal to have fun at your job, you know. Without being unprofessional in any way.
Golden words. Enjoyable things absolutely don't have to be unsafe things. Or unprofessional ones.
There's nothing unsafe in reverting to manual flight
wherever and whenever this is appropriate. Nobody on here has suggested that you should try departing from a close parallel runway with the flight directors off or that you should try landing manually in CAT III for the thrill of it. Anything like that is indeed stupid and irresponsible. But, whenever the situation permits, flying manually is just as much of a normal way of doing it as any level of automation. And, in some situations, it might be the safest or even the only certified way of flying. Think landing in strong winds. The maximum certified wind values for the autoland system are usually not even close to the maximum demonstrated wind values for manual flight. Also, an automatic approach to minimum in some abnormal configurations might not be certified. Let alone that plenty of equipment failures in themselves take out the AP and leave you with no alternative to flying manually - and you'd better rehearse that under normal conditions before you've been forced to do it out of necessity.