Originally Posted by
Centaurus
It is still actively discouraged in some airlines in Asia and the Middle East. I recall clearly a paragraph in the 737 Operations Manual of Germania airline many years ago which stated "Under no circumstances will manual flying be attempted apart from takeoff and landing."
The question was about raw data skills. That refers to more than simply manual flying (which was maybe not so clear in my answer).
In the original topic a comparison is made between RNAV approaches that have to be flown with the FD and NDB approaches flown through old-school habits (I think it was at least), and situational awareness is thrown in the pool of reasoning. This is a very narrow vision unfortunately, I challenge everyone to go back, practice the heck out of their skills, and fly the approaches old-school with so-called "augmented" situational awareness. There is a strange connection between raw data and situational awareness, for some reason people still prefer to use old school HSI indications and dare to claim their situational awareness was better "back in the day". On top, they want to do all that in manual flight.
Manual flying skills and use of automation are not connected. Use of FD does not reduce your situational awareness. It should improve. If you think it's not the case, that is your problem. The whole idea of automation is to free up your brain so you can use it more efficient. Automation has brought us improvements. If you don't understand how that is achieved in RNP approaches, you have some study work to do. Because our goal is safety, and old school raw data approaches are not up to the safety standards of mondern aviation. And your flying skills are not going to change that.
That airlines don't train pilots efficiently or correctly on modern navigation, like current PBN procedures... now that is a whole other discussion yes...