AntonyGA, I'm not offended as your statements don't really make sense to anyone who does this job professionally. If you think that automation can presently cater for all of the potentially millions of variables in a flight, you're wrong - dead wrong.
Also, not all aircraft in the sky are airliners. Try losing the yaw dampener on a bizjet and see how well the auto-pilot works.
As for flight-simmers taking to the flight deck, even if you can land an aircraft without touching the control colomn/stick, you need to know
howto use an auto-pilot. You also need to know the characteristics of your aircraft so that you can tell the controller if you can't achieve what he or she has asked you to do. Or you need someone to tell you what to do. Maybe a pilot could help you there.
A problem that arises with this, apart from the bruised egos of pilots who incorrectly believe that their own skills are being diminished, is that even qualified pilots will gradually forget how to fly the aircraft, unless they are constantly drilled on doing so in simulators.
Huh? Pilots incorrectly believe that their skills are diminishing but that's not true because they will forget how to fly the aircraft???!!!! Please explain.
So, dragging this back to topic, well done to the passanger!