Air Rabbit;
Is it "visual approach" that your are describing, or is it "contact approach" that is raising your concerns?
The Visual Approach - my thoughts are expressed above in my response to BarbiesBoyfriend. While policy permitted a Contact clearance, to my knowledge we didn't do them. Neither approach was permitted at night in mountainous territory.
The original point is getting lost in the discussion on the Visual approach, a perfectly serviceable maneuver - the point is, there are some airports which are showing up in the data where EGPWS or other FOQA events (low on approach, for example) occur but which the Visual Approach continues to be employed to get in, at night. Given this, I was connecting handflying (and obviously SA), with the execution of visual approaches under challenging conditions.