Are any of you guys actually in an airline?
All airlines i have been in (which admittedly is only 2) dont hand the keys of a $250m aircraft to a pilot and tell them to fly how ever they think best suits their need to maintain hand flying proficiency. Most airlines have a "maximum use of automation policy", which is closely monitored through LOSA and FOQA.
The old "back in my day" and " when men were men" is just reliving days gone by and those days are never coming back. In todays environment we are employed to fly the aircraft the way the company wants. If you are in a company that allows total pilot discretion as to the level of automation used, and the operation lends itself to hand flying, then good luck to you and make the most of it. I envy you.
As for those of us who are governed by our SOP's and lack of opportunity to hand fly, then I'm afraid the reality is that the degraded level of skill dictates the need to use automatics as much as the SOP's
My company SOP's dont prohibit our pilots from hand flying, but I'm yet to meet one who thinks that after a 14hr sector a visual approach is the safest option. At least not one who has been doing the job for more than a year. Bearing in mind that if there is an exceedence picked up during the approach he will get a please explain from the safety department.
As i stated earlier, with company's continually looking to drive down training costs, training departments rarely get the opportunity to train any more than the min reg requirements, which is one hand flown ILS a year, and that is usually done from established on final and configured. In my view that is not likely to give a pilot enough confidence to try the same in a real aircraft with 400 punters in the back.
Short haul flying, however, is probably a totally different beast, and i haven't done that for 20 years, and back then we used to hand fly a lot.