cosmo kramer:
The mediocre, and above pilot, will benefit from regular raw data flying. They will learn (or refresh) how the aircraft should behave from feeling and seeing what's going on while manipulating the controls themselves. The feel-, see- co-ordination is invaluable in identifying when the autopilot does something is not supposed to do (such as raise the pitch to 10 degs during approach, e.g. Turkish amsterdam).
Hence regular raw data flying will increase the situational awareness when really needed - like when you flying with autopilot ON, navigating around CBs, being kept too high in a crappy ATC environment, with no radio discipline, and controllers that hardly speak english, changing frequencies every 5 nm. Monitoring the aircraft is much easier, when you can predict what the autopilot should do in the next 10, 20 or 30 seconds and intervene if it's not doing as expected.
However, it's true that there are so many below mediocre (that would be crappy i guess) pilots out there that it's probably true that it's most likely better with the policy to leave it all to the autopilot, preferably the landing as well. Welcome to the wonder full world of airline flying, sit back relax and enjoy your flight (while the automatics will make a CFIT because your pilots are unable to fly the aircraft).
That says it all.
I transitioned from the 727 to the 767 in the early days of the 767. Needless to say, 727 pilots could hand fly quite well, or they wouldn't live to talk about it.
In those early days of the 767 our management pilots recommended flying an occasional leg in raw data and not using the auto-pilot on that leg in the terminal area.
Something has really been lost. Apparently, none of the three Turkish pilots had a clue about either attitude instrument flying or the primacy of indicated airspeed.
My initial captain check-out early in my career was on the DC-9-10. That would make a nice basic trainer for today's digital pilots.