I have been listening to posts of Airbus pilots that would never fly unless their automation was working. It might not be true but that is what they post.
True. It is a fact that most airbus pilots are very reluctant to handfly and they blame the airplane for that. The truth is that they don't trust in the airplane, typically because they don't fully understand it. It is very complex and going out of the box can bring unexpected consequences. Instead of studying and fully understanding airbus automation and flight controls, they decide to keep automation at all costs.
the usual symptom of such pilots in the sim is when the A/THR goes out, THR LK flashes on the FMA, perhaps they have the ECAM THR LVR MOVE, which means that thrust is frozen and pilot should take over from then on, and these pilots simply refuse to take over. Speed is gradually busted and still they decide to ignore the thrust levers. The caution chime will keep coming every 5 secs until you take over, so the whole situation is very irritating, and it takes a few, "thrust is yours" verbal clues until they move the levers. Many others don't have this patetic behaviour, of course but there are too many who behave like that, I have seen it many times, proportionally too many. If they did just a couple of hand flown ILS without A/THR every 2 or 3 months they wouldn't feel abandoned when A/THR is inop.
Cadets should definetly hand fly as much as they could, since one thing is loosing skill due to lack of practice and quite another is not having the skills in the first place...