I fly the E190 (and its smaller sister) and we always use AT for takeoff. It's also a very easy and forgiving aircraft to fly manually. Flying the departures manually (ie AP off) depends on many factors. (Who I am flying with, how I'm feeling, type of departure, weather, ATC area) After many years of not flying visual approaches I changed operators and suddenly was asked by some line captains if I wanted to fly a visual approach and I noticed I'd gotten very rusty. In the sim I keep getting comments that my manual handling was like the AP was on so I still had the skills. Our manuals allow raw data approaches etc depending on the factors mentioned above. And use it with common sense. Now I fly one after the other visual approach. I am glad I got pushed to use my manual skills again in real life. Turning finals at 600ft is just awsome. It always give me a smile and I've noticed that my personal workload reduced the more exposure I got.
Many Captains fly fully automatic till decision altitude. That's fne with me but the flipside is that some are uncomfortable with the AP and/or AT being off. Some try to discourage visuals/manual flying when the situation clearly permits it. He's the boss so I'll go with the flow. There's always another sector tomorrow...
My new company also operates the A319/320/321 and from what I hear from the guys who recently transitioned from Embraer to Airbus is that it is very much frowned upon to fly manual/visual. Still the same Part A manual but a different demographic of captains/background and training of them.
Last edited by John21UK; 9th Nov 2012 at 08:27.