I might be out-of-touch with airline flying, but has the simple practice of autopilot , autothrust (maybe leave it on in an A320) and flight director off for a visual approach given way to working like a one-armed paper-hangar on the mode control panel? I used to watch (with comic curiosity) the occasional pilot use the FMC and MCP to over complicate a simple situation where the majority of us would disengage all the automatics and fly the bloody thing.
My usual ports (MEL, SYD, ADL, PER, BNE, CNS, OOL, LST, HBA, CBR) offered daily opportunities to do just that. Many of the comments on this thread strike me as quite naive about the need to use automatics full-time. Raw-data and hand-flying is not some kind of crisis situation.
The comment about the FO being unable to fly a visual circuit into HBA, the need for a shared mental model to do it safely and other such comments would make me turn in my grave if I was in one.
Seriously, have new generation airline pilots degraded to the point where they can't accomplish the most simple flying tasks without automatics? Please tell me they can navigate the terminal area without LNAV; figure a descent without VNAV; hand-fly a visual approach looking out the window; fly an ILS without a flight-director – or is this whole thread just a piss-take.