Several other forums are discussing lack of REAL flying practice. How many of you PROFESSIONAL pilots actually hand-fly your automated jets when on deadheading legs?
What has deadheading got to do with it?
I find that handflying is usually the easy part: I find that I need to force myself to use the autopilot more in order to maintain systems proficiency. My tendency has always been to kick off the autopilot and handfly at the first sign of difficulty...my challenge has always been making myself work through the automation.
So far as dead legs...what's the difference? I hand fly with passengers or without. Whereas RVSM requires the autopilot to be engaged, this relegates hand flying in most cases to the climb up through FL290, and somewhere on the lower portion of the descent.
Simulator training is all well and good, but it is all premeditated drills. Who really simulates single engine failures, limited panel flying, A/P and A/T failures, raw data approaches etc.in the aircraft?
I'm not certain what simulation experience you have, but far from "premediated drills," most of my simulation experiences have been indistinguishable from the actual aircraft. I'm seldom given in advance to know what abnormal or emergency situation may develop, and I'm certainly not going to do something in the aircraft differently than I would do in the simulator.
Do we simulate engine failures in the airplane on a revenue leg or an empty leg? No, of course not. That's why we have a simulator. Do we reduce the instrument panel information during actual flight? We have no need. We do that in the simulator, too. We also do rejected takeoff and other high-risk activities in the simulator, for a good reason. Autopilot and autothrottle failures are uneventful issues, because it's simply a matter of manually working that system, or handflying the airplane...which we do all the time anyway. We fly raw data approaches all the time. Again, however, we have a simulator for specific training events, and there's no reason to go reducing capability in the airplane in flight when it can be done realistically and effectively, and economically in the simulator.
In my experience, very few operators are taking the opportunity to self improve their hand flying skills, and use their imagination to practice abnormal drills.
In my experience, you're wrong; most operators do take that opportunity, and we call it recurrent training. Very little imagination is required. One does not need to reinvent the wheel to provide meaningful, regular recurrent training.