Well.... is it modern training that may be eroding traditional flying skills or modern aircraft that erode those skills, requiring the pilots to throw away traditional techniques.
Throw in modern ATC, modern destinations (those Greek islands again), modern congestion and I defy anyone to say that taking the autopilot out in most situations is a good idea. It isn't - it degrades the PF's situational awareness and turns the PNF into a one-armed paperhanger with the same result.
The FE has gone... many flightdecks have very low-houred FOs and, no offence to them because we've all been there, a lot of cockpits are single-pilot-with-interference.
In the good old days, when your lone Comet was making an approach, you could close the throttles at TOD and hand fly all the way down, spooling up at 700 feet or so. Anyone done that at Corfu recently ? Didn't think so !
An autopilot in anything bigger than a small turbo-prop is not a luxury. Yes, they can be u/s and you can despatch with the relevant MEL sign-off (anyone remember when the MEL was a 'get you home' document and not a 'depart or we lose money' document ??!!). I've done it..... it sucked monkey balls.... all the way down to TFS and back in a 757, hand-flown... horrible. Tiring. Fatiguing.
Legal - sure. Sensible.. you tell me ?
If all the systems trip out on me going into Corfu, at night, in dodgy weather, an I going to rely on some hand-flown practiced NP approach I did into Belfast when the weather was nice, or am I going to sack it and go somewhere else with a nice visual or ILS ?
I am quite certain that, now on the Airbus, I am not a stick and rudder pilot. There's a rumour that the A380 SOPs will include autoland for every approach. Don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, there's the future.
For those who don't fly... rest assured, that despite some of the gloom about skills that I and some others share, we could still fly whatever it is we fly, safely onto the ground with no instruments and no automatics.
A bit like the circuit I'm sure we've all done in a light aircraft where the instructor covers the panel with the checklist and says...."just do it".