It's not heroic of a pilot to make a visual approach. It's utterly dismal if they can't! Are you telling me that you can't accurately land your aircraft visually without glide slope information? Astonishing...
Interesting article in US Flying magazine May 2015 and very pertinent to the above highlighted quote. The article is called "Experience Matters" The writer discusses the ICAO approved Multi-Crew Pilot Licence (MPL) scheme which qualifies
ab initio students to fly airliners as second in command with as little as 60 hours of actual flight time, the remainder of their training taking place in jet simulators.
The following extract from the article is worth pondering. "More than 1,000 MPL certificate holders - who by definition are unqualified to fly PIC of so much as a Cessna 150, - are already occupying the right seat of airliners world wide. They'll learn the ropes from their captains and lean heavily on automation and in time they'll get perfectly adept at everyday line flying on full automation. The time for a pilot to build basic flying skills is before flying for an airline, because afterward they will only get weaker
It may be some years before that proverbial dark and stormy night on which they find themselves on the edge of the envelope and their stick-and-rudder skills are tested for the first time. I'd just rather not be riding in the back when it happens. In short, modern airline flying does not build basic flying skills - it atrophies them".