"Another issue Mr. Nelson raised could be equally thorny. As planes get ever more reliable and older generations of trainers with strong manual flying skills retire, their replacements typically lack comparable experience......
“Tomorrow’s instructors will not be teaching from personal exposure” to emergencies that required pilot interventions, Mr. Nelson said. “They’ll be speaking from hearsay.”
There is a response that "airlines are now encouraging pilots to fly manually more often." From experience most airlines I've been involved with recently do the opposite. Also many SFI's teaching FFS TQ sessions, and therefore the first introduction to manual flying, are low experience pilots who have very little manual handling experience. Blind leading the blind comes to mind. There is a philosophy that maximum use of automatics is safer and more cost efficient. To implement the thrust of this topic will require quite a major change in some senior manager's opinions. A real cultural change in some companies. Interestingly this talk was given to pilot union representatives and not airline DFO's, Chief Pilots, HOT's and more importantly XAA personnel. He probably was preaching to the converted. Hopefully this could be the start of something exciting and very necessary.