I wonder to what extent the problem is with the CPL syllabus. Getting sidetracked here a bit, but the vast majority of CPL holders will become either airline pilots or flying instructors.
Airline pilots will spend much of their time on A/P.
Flying instructors will spend much of their time in small areas exploring basic aircraft handling issues.
Both will most need to earn their money dealing with emergencies, if they ever do. Neither have much requirement for accurate hand-flown precision navigation. Getting to a diversion airfield, by a slightly erratic route, a few minutes slower than hoped, really aint much of a problem in the real world.
Yet we have a CPL syllabus that is about 70% hand-flown precision nav, 15% handling emergencies, and 15% just handling.
Move the syllabus around to maybe 60% handling emergencies, 20% handling, and 20% precision nav, and you'd have something much more suited to the modern flying environment - and where people like the pilot we're all talking about would be much better fitted to dealing with real emergencies.
Incidentally I disagree with:-
urely the AAIB can use those to produce a much stronger recommendation about partial failures at low altitudes - namely, pull the power and treat the failure as a complete one.
If I had followed that advice, I'd have landed out two aeroplanes, possibly breaking them, in the last few years when I had partial EFATOs. On the other hand, fly field-to-field, positioning for the best landing site, ideally a runway, and you most likely save the aeroplane, and if all else fails, at-least crash where the emergency services can reach you easily. It would also roughly agree with your earlier:-
I believe that it was prior briefing, the instinctive nose down etc, previous practice in finding out minimum power for level flight, and enough knowledge about the fuel/air induction systems to juggle the carb heat and mixture, that allowed me to make a decent assessment and response.
G