hand flying skills?
IO-540 makes some good points, I would not like to do more than 2 hours of "hard" IMC flight without an autopilot, Paris -Madrid without an autopilot in an F-27 was an epic and there was two of us to do the flying!
But hand flying skills are something that are fast disappering in the airlines with young First Officers now unable or unwilling to fly visual approches or hand fly an ILS.
It is all a question of balance Autopilots have there place and they reduce the workload however hand flying is a perishable skill that is easily lost without practice, the bottom line is if you can't hand fly the aircraft in the airspace that you are in you should not be doing so however using the autopilot frees up so much brain capacity it is wise to use it when the workload is high.
I regularly hand fly the aircraft in IFR when the workload allows but five in afternoon at Paris GDG or Detroit Metro is not the place to do it!