The incident under discussion did not occur due to a lack of hand flying skills.
I must respectfully disagree. It was lack of hand flying skills - and the commensurate lack of flight instrument scanning ability that resulted in the pilots inability to see the rapid speed increase which in turn caused the flap overspeed. At least the pilot manually pushed open the thrust levers to go-around power after inadvertently pressing the autothrottle disconnect switch and that was a plus. He then should have immediately disconnected the autopilot and manually pitched up into the GA attitude as soon as the airspeed was seen as rapidly accelerating down the glide slope as well as reducing power as needed to keep the airspeed increase under control. .
This is where manual flying skills come into play rapidly. Instead there were several attempts to get the automatic pilot engaged. Automation dependence strikes again. Why the blinding haste to re-engage the automatics? The real reason was lack of confidence in his own manual flying ability caused by years of automation dependence. It doesn't matter how expert a pilot is in the understanding and use of the automatics, it still takes a finite time for the automatics and thus the aircraft to react.
Often in the simulator we see pilots pressing the TOGA button and getting flustered if for some reason the thrust levers do not go forward. So what happens - well they keep on feverishly hitting the TOGA switch hoping a miracle will happen and the throttles will go up. In the meantime the airspeed steadily reduces...
How many times do we see in the simulator an instructor who demonstrates - repeat - demonstrates, how to seamlessly switch from an automatics type instrument approach to a manual approach with just three clicks of the AP, AT, turn off the FD and complete the approach manually. This should be normal competency. But it rarely happens because instructor demonstrations are a thing of the past. And more probably because the instructor himself lacks the skill or currency to do the demonstration. Yet the very basics of instructing include first demonstrate.
always thought that the old CAA Base Check/IR was a bit like the Seven Labours of Hercules but the new regime, in my opinion, was far too lax and seemed to me to be a recipe for concealing weaknesses that could have been put right with proper instruction and further training.
JW 411 nails it.