Old fart talking here, so listen up
In the good old days, circling was fun, easily doable with fairly experienced skippers and f/os and nice cockpit gauges which allowed good crosschecks as both pilots alternated looking in and out. Even with the PM straining to look out monitoring the visual cues, obstacles, etc the layout of those old steam gauges allowed his peripheral vision to monitor engine/flight instrumentations with relative ease. Try doing that in today's CRT/LED displays...not that easy.
In times past, pilots get a real feel of the performance of the aircraft through good " endorsement training " with many takeoffs/landings, touch n gos in a real physical environment; now with this ZFT sim training thingy, endorsement training is a joke.
The circling involves full hands on flying for the PF with full concentration on the flight path, profile and performance management by feel, good eyeballing and of course, experience. The PM monitors both visually and through the instruments, helping to navigate if need to without being distracted with all the manipulating of dials, heading updates, etc as they now practise in the sim.
Different world out there today; so maybe circling may be done away with in the not too distant future!
