I find it very interesting that we as a pilot group believe that hand flying skills have eroded and become a contributing factor to accidents / incidents and thus a return to more hand flying will improve chances of correct handling of abnormal situations.
Skill training, skill retention and skill fade have not been a contributing factor to any of the recent accidents on either the Boeing or the Airbus. Recent Scientific Research points to the contrary.
Lack of understanding of Automation and how it behaves in a non normal situation is what has caused the recent accidents including the 777 accident in Dubai.
This of course is down to perhaps fatigue, lack of exposure in the simulator and or understanding of the systems. We no longer either fly or automate, rather we interact with the automation systems and just as we have spent years training CRM for Human Beings so we should for machines through HFI.
I do believe that the prescriptive simulator sessions we do add no value to understanding recognition primed decisions and or creative problem solving as instructors are now trained within the confines of the airline very quickly and with no in depth training of Human Factors, Cognitive Informatics, and NDM.
The rudder pitch and trim, instrument scan, bank and pitch angle limits detailed in CAA documents around the world do nothing more than ensure skill training and retention for very specific exercises.
If anyone really believes that hand flying a 777 for five hours across the bay of bengal, or even disconnecting the AP and A/T at an early stage to give them more exposure time will improve their skills is grossly mistaken and does not understand the way modern aircraft fly any more.
What we do need is more simulator training to understand how to integrate, interact and take over the automatics when they do not perform to our bounded understanding of the situation.
I do not know what is the route cause of the 777 accident in Dubai, nor can I say that they made the wrong decision because in aviation terms we do not judge the outcome only but the process followed.
The two chaps dealt with an unusual situation and clearly were dealt the wrong end of the stick. None of us go to work with the intent to make a mistake, or believing that this day is going to be the day we make an error which will lead to an accident.
The decision to performa a go-around and retract the gear, though in hindsight may seem odd, at the time must have appeared to them as the only rational decision.
We need to learn from this so that the rest of us do not end in a similar situation and make a similar mistake. The emirates training department needs to learn from this and start teaching and developing pilots rather than just producing compliant non effective training scenarios.
Our kids go to school and we judge and assess their teachers based on their ability to differentiate and teach to the level required.
When was the last time that any of us had a simulator instructor who differentiated his training and pitched it to the level required. Perhaps a trainee needs a little bit more work with his / her EFATO training, but just because he / she achieved the minimum level and due to time pressures we moved on to TCAS handling to tick the box when more value would have been gained by spending a little bit more time on the EFATO.