You are not seriously saying that a circling approach at night into a poorly lit area with high terrain would be safer flown manually (assuming competent hand flying skills)?
He didn't say that. But once upon a time - certainly in my lifetime in the Air Force - "a circling approach at night into a poorly lit area with high terrain" was accepted as a perfectly normal procedure because we were well trained. We were taught good airmanship. The aircraft was hand flown with confidence - not the trepidation we see nowadays. Depending on the type it might be single pilot because that's the way it was in those days. And in those days autopilots were nothing like as reliable and accurate as todays marvellous sophisticated automation.
There were two pilots in that Airbus. Clearly whoever was handling that night was incompetent by any standards. The support pilot, be he the captain or first officer, was also incompetent at his prime task of monitoring the flight path and offering support at the right time without overdoing the talking.
As has been discussed in thousands of words in these forums, when todays flight simulator sessions are 90 percent button pushing and staring at the MAP mode, it is inevitable that incompetent crews will often be out of their comfort zone and risk making a complete hash of handling the aircraft, once the disconnect red button is pressed and the autopilot says "handing over - all yours captain".
The solution has been obvious for years yet ignored by aircraft manufacturers and operators alike. That is what simulators are for; and that is to train pilots how to fly the aircraft type safely both in IMC and visually. To be equally competent on automatic and manual flight.
The current accent on 90 percent button pushing in the simulator leaves no time remaining in a session for the essential practice at skilful hand flying on instruments. The plethora of loss of control accidents has graphically demonstrated this fact.