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Having said that you might be surprised at how many pilots have difficulty when turned lose on their own to get the airplane on the ground safely.
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That is why I ask the question
Anyone can fly a visual approach .. it is how we start our flying of course and I love doing them in my Pitts.
My point is that does the shorter track distance, perhaps increased number of runway movements (although I think Heathrow and others do pretty well anyway) and shorter flight times warrant discarding all we have learned about approach and landing accident prevention (primarily through use of Constant Descent, Runway Aligned Approaches = ILS or perhaps VNAV for anyone on a modern machine)
This is a question of cost benefit I guess. Here in NZ a lot of guys arriving at Auckland for RWY23L ask for a Visual App and are cleared for same but must be established on final inside 3DME. The VOR/DME is pretty close to the threshold. I see a lot of guys turn through final, use high descent rates etc - it ain't pretty and I ask - what's the point?