"couldn't fly instruments" vs. "pilots who could really fly"
At hopefully only a bit of risk toward thread creep . . . and looking only at the lack of hand-flying skills and/or proficiency as a factor in the incident, a question, particularly directed at those who are a bit (or quite) incredulous at SOPs in question (or at the larger trend of over-reliance on automation): suppose that international standards magically were to be changed so that hand-flying proficiency became a requirement for CAAs to issue licenses for pilots. Would the standard be essentially a reiteration of the skills and proficiency required before automation became both so sophisticated and widespread? Or would your formulation of what constitutes sufficient airmanship with respect to flying the aeroplane without automation represent some later-day definition? (Of course, I did say "magically" . . . so I'm not planning on needing to deflect any broadsides about how unrealistic the premise of my question is.)