His dudeness:
These airplanes are very easy to fly and forgiving. However, the performance especially of the 3 & 4 means that it takes a lot of experience to stay ahead of your airplane IF something goes wrong.
I agree with GF and I think, we are teached to overuse the A/Ps a tad. While I would always try to use as much A/P as possible in a REAL situation, Iīd certainly would prefer more training without it. But then, we donīt really know how and how much the pilot in question was trained.
Nonetheless, if a single pilot is "over relying" on the auto-pilot, he/she had better well know all the modes very well, especially for engagement just after takeoff. Otherwise, the autopilot can fly into the water just as easily as a messed up job of hand flying. Asiana reminded us of that at KSFO.