During my Type Rating course on the 737 I remember to have seen a few training videos. ( think produced by United and American). One was dealing with the crash of the Birgen Air 757 a few years back. Apparently one airline in the States gave the same scenario 50 sets of crew in their simulator. None of them crashed. The training captain on that video mentioned, that the lack of hand-flying skills contributed to this accident because it seemed that in Europe a slightly different approach to commercial flying is practised than in the States: AP most of the time, especially in emergencies. Which of course could be a safe option, but could you put also outside the loop. The particular training captain encouraged his crew to hand fly the bird below 10000ft, if weather permits.
A collegue of mine was on a jumpseat of a Fed-Ex (i believe) DC-10 into New York a few moons back. He told me: all handflown. No AP
And silky smooth.
