Peter
I hope you don't mean me. I never dispute that autopilot is a wonderful tool, even a basic wing leveller allows one to relax in the cruise and spare some capacity to manage the flight.
However in the case mentioned, ie Cork, it had nothing to do with the accident. I know you don't hold people who fly for a living in any regard, but hand flying for an hour or two is no big deal, a pain in the backside perhaps but not an issue. A good crew will assist each other, take a shot each in the cruise if it's a long trip etc etc. Indeed the practice that hand flying gives means that their manual flying skills will be first class, and shooting approaches manually second nature.
Sadly in this case poor decision making seems to be the cause. Three approaches to an airfield they were never going to get in to legally, ignoring the approach ban, refusing to divert and continuing below minimas all point to blatant pilot error. The interim report just published also mentions the power levers being brought into the beta range whilst airborne. Lethal. It also mentions the Captain operating the power levers whilst the FO flies. Again this shows poor judgement and a disregard for basic CRM.