Airbubba;
Well, in the States, the circling approach has been eliminated both in the sim and in real life by most operators for a couple of decades now. A lot of crashes in the 'old days' were on these approaches even though the pilots were allegedly better in stick and rudder handling back then.
And, I do think you would be foolish not to turn on the autopilot in a widebody while doing one of those wacky UK departures with low level offs, low transition altitude, noise flyover points and three 8.33kHz channel frequency changes below 10,000 feet.
Agree with you 100%. It is worth noting too, that autoflight and FMC technology permits much more sophisticated departures and arrivals because the expectation is that they will be FMC-programmed and flown on the autopilot. Autoflight provides accuracy in speed, rate of climb, crossing restrictions met and solid altitude capture and holding and thus permits denser traffic on same routes without compromising safety - absolutely it is the place for autoflight. I never hand-flew the LHR departures. Also, we stopped doing circling approaches probably 30 years ago; our Visual approach limits are 1000-3. The last circle-to-land accident was in Korea if you'll recall - a 767-300.