West Coast;
Yup, when everything is working just fine the automation does well... However, when we need you to do something, we don't need to wait a couple of minutes while you are programing. It has also been featured in more than just a few incident and accident reports that the crew was no longer prepaired for the airmanship that was needed when the automation was no longer working as advertised... You don't use the skills they atrophy. Shoot, watching someone either on the flight deck or from behind the scope when asked to do something and then watch what happens when they have problems getting the FMS to do what they want it to do... It's almost like an emergency to them to have to fly raw data...
regards