Carruthers (or perhaps we should call you Gollum) -
Tell you what, whenever next you fly, mention your PPRUNE handle to the flight crew. They might just take a day off and leave you to attempt to program your beloved automatics to try to fly the aircraft to destination. The pilots can leave (you know, the dangerous, irrelevant, egotistical and overpaid people at the front) followed closely by all the rest of the passengers. They can all watch your laughable efforts from the comfort of the departure lounge Starbucks from now until my retirement in about 20 years time.
Or you could try blagging a ringside seat in a simulator. Last time I was obliged to fly in the box, ooooh let me see now, at least 3, yes count 'em, 3 manually flown approaches on 2 and 1 engines, and you know what, some of those ended in manually flown go-arounds. Even more amazing, I didn't crash!
And even more amazing is the fact that professional airline pilots do this week in week out. Compare that with the number of times your computer fails, and you put your faith in the latter?
Meanwhile, back at Starbucks, I'll have another expresso......
(They stole it, those filthy thieving airline pilots, my precious, my job, my self-esteem, those horrible, filthy pilots, they stole my PRECIOUSSSSS..... (on ad nauseam))