[QUOTE]Would rather, as in any day of the week and twice on Sundays, fly with a crew who are free to exercise judgement, and use automatics as and when it's the best option. Flying a short sector on a clear skies day, off a fairly quiet airport and into one that's even quieter, encountering almost no other traffic either enroute or in the terminal areas, is obviously a perfect opportunity to take the bull by the horns and do a spot of driving yourself. Any operation which has SOPs written specifically to prevent that, is run by a bunch of idiots. Probably the un-holy and culture destroying trinity of Lawyers, Accountants and Consultants.[QUOTE]
As a three crew operator of the BA TriStar it was routine to be able to manually handle the aircraft as required. The additional pair of eyes monitoring the flight progress made it a safe procedure. However, most crew would only hand fly the aeroplane if the circumstances were suitable to do so, i.e. not a busy ATC environment or bad weather. Given that there are now only two crew on the flight deck it wouldn't be prudent to have to expect the other pilot to have to closely monitor the handling pilots performance whilst also carrying out his other normal duties. However, if company rules allow hand flying to take place I wouldn't expect a professional crew to do so during anything but good flying conditions and quiet airspace. Just my two-penneth.
TCF