cessnap... perhaps you should challenge yourself to provide the evidence for your conclusions. Loss of skills vs automation is still an open issue but the balance to date favours degraded mental skills over manual skills.
This accident appears to be more associated with cognitive skills than manual handling.
The action to move the thrust levers forward requires an understanding of the need to do it, which implies an understanding of why thrust did not increase automatically as demanded. The mental model was for automatic thrust, the situation required a change of view to that associated with manual operation. How is this achieved, how do pilots change mode, what might impede this, time, experience, memory recall, startle …
https://www.halldale.com/files/halld...ts/Martin.pptx
What features contributed to the need for pilots to change their mental view? And could this change be achieved in a timescale no longer than it takes to read this post?
After though: if pilots were faced by this situation in late Jan 2008, how many would focus their attention on engine malfunction.