Let's not bag Air France, after all only 10 hull losses in 38 years, including the only loss of a 340, obviously a pretty sound safety system in place there? Maybe they should go back to drinking wine with dinner.
Most of the airlines I have worked for required hand flying in the sim, in fact one required every second sim to be around 50% manual flying
Unreliable airspeed is a recall and none of the recall items are full back stick, if old mate had done absolutely nothing the aeroplane would pretty much have flown itself.