Unfastened cowlings have nothing to do with reliance on automated flight...
It's good practice to use a level of automation appropriate to the workload, and it's very unfortunate if the situation/snag/defect/occurrence has led to the absence of said automation.. just when you could do with it.
But is it not a concern that the pilots seem to have struggled to manually fly a one engine out approach, which should be a very well trained procedure, to the point of splitting handling/thrust duties, which doesn't seem ideal. And a captain panicking and shutting down the engine without following procedure, there's a very good reason for that procedure and a lot of pointed remarks were made about the ability of the transasia captain who did the same.
I hope a humble approach will be taken in the organisation, there are issues raised all the way through in this report, and the fact they occur at every level from management to maintenance to crew suggests they are not one-offs...