Reading post by Centaurus and Pace highlights a few misunderstandings and generalisations about lo co world of flying the airbus.
I also believe some of the recent posts seem to be going towards the bashing of cadet FO's where really I think in this tragic german wings event 'the holes in the Swiss cheese' lined up in a very individual case.
Firstly to Pace, The A320 is an automated aircraft but shockingly can be flown manually without an AP FD and A/THR and I think you will be surprised at how often that does happen. Obviously there is a time and a place so a remote greek island ndb approach with strong gusts might be one of those times to leave it all in. I did a raw data approach manually done 20 miles out autothrust out and on the next homeward leg the FO turned round and asked if he do the same as me. Looking at this 22year old 1 direction lookalike who must definatley did not look very piloty to me with 400hrs TT I thought to myself will if he mucks it up at least it will give me more practice. He then preceded to do the most accurate and precisely flown manual raw data approach I have ever seen. Few months later let a very experienced FO fly a raw data approach fully manually. He had not taken into account the extent of the tailwind ( which on the airliners can be a big problem as there is a lot of energy to slow down something the GA guys and small biz jet superpilots probably won't know much about). If it wasn't for some prompting for the gear from me I we would have flown the ILS twice.
Centaurus
I have done a Boeing type rating and Airbus type rating in the last 10 years. Both included a fair bit of manual flying but most focus is on the failure of aircraft systems. Also both times I did line training (they were both as an FO and when I got cmd on the Airbus) you had to do raw data manual thrust no AP. Manual handling is becoming an increasing part of the recurrent sims.
Every pilot is an individual and needs to treated that way. You get FO's flown for mutiple airlnes in their 40's but will definitely get the hump if you point something out or guys with plenty of life experience before they got into flying who won't take banter its not just young cadets who fall to those faults.