Interesting thread. I wonder why the God Almighty rush to engage the autopilot at 400 feet following an engine failure at lift off. Is it because pilots have forgotten the ancient art of hand flying? One operator said it was because F/O's in their company are not trained to monitor to hand flying - only trained to monitor automatics. Other operators policy is to only engage the autopilot following engine failure at lift off when the aircraft has been cleaned up.