Bradley, I wonder if you are missing the point?
The benefit of reduced time/fuel needs to be assayed against the increase risk of an unstabilised approach and resultant Go Around. There are also question about designing SOPs for a Visual Approach .. what are the standard calls, what are the trigger points for gear/flap, how do we tell when the guy flying it needs some support etc?
A visual approach is a reasonable level of risk to assume, as long as certain parameters are met...which of course depends on your own company specific SOP's, and how you apply them.
My present employer, as well as the previous one, assess a visual approach as a perfectly acceptable method for the flightcrew to get their respective aircraft onto the runway in a safe efficient fashion.
What I am getting at is that as professional aviators charged with a lot of responsibility we are expected to provide maximum affordable safety at all times and I, personally, am not convinced of the cost benefit of visual approaches, particularly non-runway-aligned when there is a proven safer alternative available for the sake of a few SOPs, briefing and setup of the cockpit for an Instrument Approach.
Far be it for me to question your own personal stand point, suffice to say however, I suspect that there are a great many who do not share your viewpoint.
The argument of maintaining the ability to hand fly a no FD A/T visual approach for the vanishingly small chance of a total EFIS failure seems, to me, false economy.
Yet Bradley, that risk does exist..so in essense you are removing that link in the error/event chain that could prevent a negative outcome.
Finally
I won't start in about the new crop of very low time chaps we have coming into the RHS these days as I expect every jet pilot to meet the standard and that should include the ability to hand fly a raw data visual approach - but that is what the sim is for.
Perhaps Bradley, your opinion is coloured somewhat by your present operational environment (and I'm a transplanted Kiwi who now flys in Europe)......if that opinion/idea was promulgated here, a great many heavy jet operators would be unable to service certain destinations with any regularity..as you probably know.
On the other extreme, you have the USA where ATC will quite happily clear you for a visual approach...and clear you to land...with 3 or 4 aircraft ahead of you
