Parrabellum wrote;
The majority of recent accidents/incidents involving loss of control appear to have more to do with electronics that go haywire and bits that fall off, rather than any basic weakness in hand flying, indeed, when was the last CFIT due to sub-standard hand flying?
About two months ago on approach to land in Amsterdam? Or was that sub standard auto flight?
I trust you are suitably chastened by JTs response to your upbraiding of Tee Emm; few posts doesn't mean few hours here on Pprune!
Basic flying skills MUST be practiced whenever possible for the very reasons given; when it all goes belly up, as it inevitably will, as has been shown in the past, then the only thing that saves the day is the ability to put the aircraft the right way up, with the right amount of power to guide the lump of metal safely earthwards.
There is no failed, powerless, degraded, iced up automatic system in the world that can ever tell me when the aircraft is the right way up when in IMC in cloud at night. Maybe my cheeks won't do it either but my piece of string with a weight on it clipped to the eye rail will!