loulou
At my old house, autoflight was not mandatory but it was recommended. Of course, with Cat II and IIIA/B approaches, it was autoflight for autoland. We did not have HUDs.
Autopilots can be a useful 3rd pilot in emergencies/abnormals (read 'non-normal' in more recent manuals) with the Capt running the checklists, the F/O programming and monitoring "George" and "George" doing the flying.
At times when workload goes up, IF the crew fully understands the autoflight system, you can let 'George' do the flying while the crew does the thinking.
As one HuFacts guy noted, "good combination of the dry computer and the wet computer (brain)."
The problem is sometimes the crews do not fully understand the autoflight system and that is a reflection on 1) training or 2) the autoflight mode design or 3) the crew.