There is no place for handling a big jet at 41000 ft manually. Humans just can't do it as well as an autopilot to handle the reduced longitudinal stability at high altitude.
I am sure you are right. On the other hand it makes you wonder how RAF and RAAF pilots coped with flying Canberra bombers regularly at 45,000 feet and even up to 50,000 ft in IMC with no autopilot, no first officer and no weather radar and a tendency for both engines to flame-out unexpectedly at these altitudes due to compressor stalls.
Considering some of these youngsters pilots had less than 1000 hours total time, it says a lot for their basic instrument flying skills and of course manual flying skills. Could it be that your point "there is no place for handling a big jet at 41,000 ft manually" is not that it is potentially dangerous as you imply, but simply because pilots of big jets spend 98% of their time on automatics leaving little else to do but monitor the progress page.
With many operators today actively discouraging any form of hand flying both in the real thing and in simulator training, is it any wonder that hand flying a big jet at high altitude is actually beyond the capabilities of the average airline captain and certainly beyond the capabilities of the average new hire MPL.
