Even with calm winds on a clear day, if you fly the glideslope/loc on autopilot and any other plane is near the ILS transmitters or you have wake turbulence, the plane will fly in a way that will scare some passengers. The other planes are only held well clear during Cat 2/3 approaches, or if an ILS 'hold' line is designated.
Do you know your planes' limits and your own comfort limits?
By the way, don't all (real) pilots want to hand fly many of their approaches, unless the ceiling is less than 1,000' or the visibility is somewhere near minimums? Even after 'flying' the 757 for over three years, I only saw Captains make a required (once a month) autoland about two or three times, total, because it is so easy to fly by hand. But even a normal 'altitude capture' might not go smoothly so just disconnect it and reselect one of three autopilot buttons. A Lufthansa A-340 pilot told me in SFO that his plane once made a sudden 20-25 degree roll during climbout in Munich behind a 757(!), due to wake turbulence. Anyway, some of our 757 Captains often hand-flew departures to above FL 180...or so. If some pilots are afraid to hand-fly or are required to use automation all the time, that would seem really strange to me. This topic reminds me of another one on Pprune. Some younger pilots seem confused about who is really working for whom, i.e., the one in the seat versus the autopilot/VNAV/LNAV/autothrottle systems??
One of the pilots who works "over there" (from the "native tribes") told me that in the UK the airlines are not really interested in piloting skills. If so, do they feel that piloting skills are just for smaller planes because automation is always a safer substitute? Could some Flight Standards Departments around the world have actually desired years ago that the highest levels of flight automation be developed as a substitute for very low experience levels, because the time for this experience to accumulate bothered them? Do some departments therefore demand that pilots always leave automation "in command" because hand-flying most of the departure and approach makes them uncomfortable, or don't want the non-flying pilot to be then constantly pushing buttons on the MCP and FMC? confused: