fireflybob
"Years ago we would think nothing about despatching with an inoperative autopilot because we knew we could competently hand fly at cruise levels."
Exactly! Character building stuff and it kept us awake. Well most of us anyway, in remote areas. South Atlantic comes to mind. Pre RVSM of course.
If you can hand fly at cruise accurately, you can normally do what you needed to do with the a/c hand flying. Got quite good on raw information too as the FD wasn't all that helpful in pitch at cruise altitude, IIRC.