Originally Posted by Drfaust
Practicing it will increase your capacity and awareness. The result will be familiarity and comfort with hand flying in normal circumstances, so when things get a bit more serious you'll simply have more capacity to deal with it and won't put yourself in the position of forgetting the pure basics. I find that a worthy cause, even if it's an Airbus.
Hit the nail on the head. The more hand flying you do, the better you get at monitoring, not to mention interpreting/recovering the situation if it all goes suddenly pear-shaped.
the drivers must have absolute mastery of the controlling software. The truly effective pilot must know that damn automation almost as well as the engineers that wrote it. Do they? A few of the interested and better trainers may, but I'd guess that the vast majority of the operating line staff do not.
How complex
is an Airbus??