The challenge is to be totally proficient in correcting all the anomalies with the automatics entirely or partially. The supreme rule is never ever getting into situations where you have to use your super self declared " acy profiency " to manually get out of situations where you have gotten the automatics into. In my years of training pilots I have seen proud " old aces " get the automatics into !!!!ty situations and then proudly clicking them off to fly manually, mostly to an untidy end. Their pride.....they didn't crash despite the " failed automatics ". Actually there was absolutely nothing wrong with the automatics in those instances; the problem was the self declared aces did not understand the proper use of the automatics and misuse the functions.
I suspect Totempole has hit the 447 nail fairly on the head.
Not suggesting the crew did what is suggested in his post above, but its a fact that manual flying did not work out on 447 unfortunately.