Hand flying
Tee Emm:
In days gone by in the Falcon 10, we had an exercise to hand fly from take -off to top of climb (FL 410 ) and the reverse, from top of cruise down to the approach and manual landing. Sometimes I would cover the HSI with my hand and ask "what heading are you steering", some of the replies were nowhere near the actual heading. The exercise could be done easily, with little effort and some of the crews who originally were against the idea, came to like it and improved greatly.
One side effect that came home was that to get the required performance, to obtain the cruising level you had to be able to fly a constant heading and keep the wings level.
If an autopilot can do it, so can an ordinary pilot (with a bit of training ).
Lets hope the industry can get Manual flying skills to a level that is higher than at present.
Tmb