Ah HOTAS
According to Wikipedia, a concept first pioneered on the Lightning. (That's the English Electric version, not the slower F35B!)
there are very very few circumstances where the pilot flying the airplane instead of the automatics "is really not smart". If you can come up with a scenario where it's "really not smart" for the pilot to fly his airplane, I'd love to hear it.
Ok, here goes:
Your flying a coupled Cat 3A approach into EGLL. It's 200m in fog. At decision height, when you don't see the required visual references, are you
REALLY going to push the thrust levers forward and pull the yoke back, as your
FIRST actions?
At that moment, you are 50' above a runway you can't see. You've just disengaged the autopilot, and depending on the sequencing of your actions, you could well be holding the thrust levers against the drive motors, until you push TOGA.
In the words of Sergeant Wilson: "Are you sure that's wise"?
We're flying a passenger jet here. We don't really want to be exploring the aerobatic envelope 'a la' HOTAS F18!
But we can still fly these aircraft with elegance, as long as we know what we're doing! For that, we just need quality training, followed by frequent rehearsal!
I'm afraid I disagree with 1201alarm who says this is a 'challenging manouvre'. It's just a take off with manual thrust, and an unusual flap setting! I know, because my employer insists I practice it.