Well. You know people could just hand fly a bit more. My airline encourages it and it is done a lot in the sim. Perhaps a list of airlines forbidding pilots from manually flying an approach should be named and shamed? After all automation complacency and lack of flying skills is an industry wide issue. I don't proclaim to fly every single approach manually but I do to keep up the flying skills. As do many of my colleagues.
I agree, MJ, this is central to solving our skill-numbing automation conundrum. The problem is with the airlines - with them it is a numbers game. For maybe 50 or 100 out of 999 times, a hand-flown aircraft might give the folks in the back more bumping around and "discomfort" than the alternative. The problem with playing the statistics is on that 1000th time, you need the gents in front to have an idea of how to fly the aircraft as part of their muscle memory. The only way that can happen is with more hands-on time, regularly.
Increased (and paid) simulator sessions would be a partial solution and should be regulated into a trial program of volunteer pilots and airlines. Without government subsidy or tax breaks, it would raise costs in the short term, but as we as a group become more man-machine conversant, the rate of the very costly 'incidents' and accidents would decrease dramatically if our original lack of skills theory holds true - I'm betting there's little disagreement on that last bit... It would be a small price to pay for such a dramatic increase in our shared pool of solid, basic flying skills, to be applied as needed.