Originally Posted by
draglift
I spent many years flying 747s to Africa and the Caribbean and rarely saw an ILS. The more approaches you do without an ILS the better pilot you will be.
And this is the highly visible elephant in the room that the automation-loving posters just refuse to acknowledge. In essence, ATC offering visual approaches in safe conditions is, in the long-term, SAFER for everyone. Removing the option or requiring functional glide slopes, ILS, etc. everywhere is just reducing the problem to the lowest common denominator "solution." That's the knee-jerk "easy" way out but does nothing to raise the collective bar. This is only "safer" when dependence on automation and lack of pilot skills is the norm.
The true solution is not to increase automation, but instead to raise the collective bar through increased training and daily exposure to approaches which are not dependent on automation for success. It certain airlines cannot meet this requirement then they quite simply aren't safe to fly. Any other workaround such as requiring x, y, or z to be active at all times coddles unsafe pilots and pleases the bean counters at the expense of aggregate pilot skill.