Given the tiny, narrow performance box in which airline operations conduct business, it's little wonder that many basic skills erode. Airline pilots have long been considered one of the more dangerous groups of renters when it comes to light airplanes. This isn't an indictment on the large airplane pilot, but it does spak to the lack of experience or recency in a particular area. Get someone who has only flown a 747 for several years to go land a Cessna 172, and see them try to flare high, fly the approach fast.
Skills are perishable.
Likewise, if one doesn't fly a visual approach for a long time, and sticks to only flying ILS approaches by reference to instruments, one may be less than stellar at making an approach using only ones eyes for reference (vs VASI, PAPI, glideslope, etc).
Where airlines push hard for their crews to make full use of automation and advanced technology, policies are often instituted requiring the use of that equipment. My own employer requires a written report to the Chief Pilot for failure to use autobrakes, for example. Landing performance is calculated using autobrakes, given a known acceleration value, and that value remains constant even with reverse thrust. Thus, it makes sense. Some operations have very different policies with regard to the same equipment.
Where operators insist on training and flying with the flight director as the minimum standard for "raw data," those receiving that training never have the opportunity to experience flight without the flight director. I can speak to several operations in which this is the case; worse-case scenario in simulator training involves no autopilot and flight director only, with FMC/FMS functions available. To my mind, this doesn't represent a high degredation in aircraft capability, and thus doesn't really address a potential real-world situaiton in which more might be lost. The operators with whom I am familiar who do this are not budget crunching, nor are they using inexperienced pilots. They are focusing on training based on reality. Their training is conducted hand in hand with the manufacturer, hand in hand with the overseeing governing body, and hand in hand with data showing mean times between failure for their equipment, and what historically can be expected. Accordingly, they make maximum use of training time addressing operational issues that are expected.
What this does NOT represent is a global conspiracy to lower the standard of airmanship, in order to save money. Certainly one can expect, where hand-flying is discouraged or restricted, a decrease in certain hand-flown skills. I've seen more than a few experienced hands reach for automation as soon as possible, particularly in a time of stress. It's taught at nearly all levels, where automation is available, to make use of that automation. It's standard fare to use it as much as possible during a checkride, for example, to reduce workload and provide one the greatest opportunity to show strengths and not weaknesses. Let's face it, given a checkride, who choses to fly it all by hand on raw data? That's not a "beancounter" debacle; that's a pilot call that nearly all will make.
When the chips are down and you're being evaluated, do you choose to handfly on raw data, or do you choose to use automation?