I can't quote figures for the B1900 splat but we've got two J31's in our fleet with autopilot and two without, and the empty weight of the non a/p ones is a good couple hundred kgs lighter ... that makes a hell of a difference to the economics of how many punters you can haul out of a short strip on a hot afternoon ... in fact I would say on quite a few of our longer sectors it's the difference between making money and not making money. If we have a long charter down into Europe somewhere and have more than about 12 pax we quite often have no choice but to send the non a/p machines or we'd never get airborne.
Yes hand flying can get to be a real drag after a day of hard-out IMC but on the bright side, I know for a fact that the pilots from our little airline have a real reputation amongst a few big jet operators here in the UK, as good handlers with rock solid I/F skills, and we all tend to get snapped up pretty quickly by the big boys once we've got 1000 hours or so with this company. I suspect that is also one of the reasons why Eagle pilots have had such a high strike rate with Cathay over the years, they know you guys can actually hand fly an aeroplane
