In my outfit, we fly two diffrent 'types' with totally diffrent roles, Regional and Medium haul to be precise. For the Regional guys the rules of engagement are simple, ' do what you like' i.e Hand-fly, Auto-fly, whichever.. The OM, though not strictly, does suggest a "Judicious use of automation to reduce crew workload". But because we fly to a combination of Apts doing ILS,VOR, NDB/or Visual in one single hop !! (Yup, you heard it right), Short fields, Narrow rwys, etc. we end up having our share of (manual) fun quite often. But even here some chappies prefer doing even a Visual with the A/P !! To each their own I say..
On the other hand, the "Bus" drivers are much more restricted, they are 'forbidden' to dis-engage their fancy automation (A/T, FD, A/P..) unless a situation demands it (type of failure, QRH action,etc.)
This I feel is downright absurd and dangerous. If you don't allow a bloke to practise his manual flying skills on his set of wheels , how do you expect him to be profecient when the auto-matics go out the window and the situation warrants every ounce of your skill.
Though a lot has been discussed on this forum regarding the importance of hand-flying, automation, a mix of both, etc,etc. nobody can dispute the fact that a Pilot's Flying-Skill is the one he's most proud of, and any lack of it results directly in underconfidence. Its also encouraging to see some carriers allowing/promoting hand-flying even in modern M/H category ac. I've also heard some european carriers mandate a Pilot to fly T/O to 10,000 and 10,000 to landing without any automation to keep their skill levels up especially the ones on FBW ac (twice in 30 consec. days or something). Hope this trend cathes on with others aswell.....
Till then, wish you Blue skies and Greasy landings !
