Now that the thread has got going I’ll put in my thoughts that seemed inappropriate when I started it.
First I agree 100% with
A and C in his first post; a well balanced thread is an endangered species, lets not get into a Europe vs US or Boeing vs Airbus fight this time!
I’m only a 100 hour PPL having learnt late in life, but as a very frequent traveller (and systems engineer) I would much prefer both pilots to be current at flying the aircraft without the autopilot. One of my favourite aphorisms is that “A fail safe system fails, when it fails to fail safe”, the pilots are partly (largely?) there to cope with these potential failures, either by managing the systems appropriately or by “hand flying” as becomes necessary. It appears to me therefore that not being current at “hand flying” removes a large part of an important aspect of flight safety, after all why did you guys have to build the hours in SEP and MEP rather than in a low tech simulator before moving on?
Not having flown a full simulator I leave it to others to comment the effectiveness in practising for “hand flying” in them.