John F
I see your point.
However, according to you, not only hand flying should be banned, but also manual landings.
Did they perform 10 million autolands to certify the system?
I don't trust the way safety assessment is done, regarding those "extremely unlikely" figures. How do they know? There is always something not taken into account that makes those probabilities more likely than they would like.
When so many variables tend to infinite, comparison is not very meaningful.
As for manual flight in general, you also have to take into account the probabilities of a catastrophic incident following a failure that leaves automation u/s. How much have they increased due to the lack of skill generated by overdependance in automation?
I guess you would defend NO GO any automation unserviceability in every MEL. But it can happen in flight, in a rainy and turbulent day.
I think that, given the magnitude of the probability figures that they are handling, autoflight is extremely safe, but overall safety will be increased if crews remain skilled by practising hand flying when conditions are OK.
What is the danger in hand flying for a while after take off? Do you think it is dangerous? Or that it is dangerous to disconnect AP FD from time to time to go down the ILS manually?
Isn't it dangerous that an airplane crashes because the total lack of handflying skils makes the crew unaware of an automation malfunctions?
Automation is better understood by pilots with good handflying skills. These will detect incorrect AP behaviour at the onset, instead of too late.
Honbestly I don't think that 10^-9 figures (calculated) should make us ban hand flying.
I also think that the AP makes better aproaches in bad weather that I can do myself.