Originally Posted by
Safety Concerns
... when you reread Aeroperu, Birginair and several others, you could perhaps expand on your fear that this is something to do with airbus.
It's not BOAC's fault - the received wisdom in the piloting community is that the dependence on automation and company edicts to use the automatics wherever possible started with the introduction of the A320. A little digging will reveal that this is not the case, with full-featured FMS being around since the '70s and widespread on the line with the introduction of the 757 and 767 in the late '70s/early '80s.
It's possible that it became even more widespread later on, but I'd argue that probably has more to do with the retirement of the "old school" management and executive levels, many of whom had worked their way up through the airline, or indeed founded it - and their replacement with the newer generation of MBA grads who were more purely bottom-line orientated. Unfortunately this also happened to coincide with the introduction on the A320 in the late '80s and early '90s, which may have served to reinforce the perception.