Not for nothing, but you know there's no limitation on how much you can hand fly. Just saying...

And I always hear this whole, "well flying is fun but airline flying isn't 'real' flying" argument. Okay, well, great. If you know of somewhere I can go get paid to mess around in a Piper Cub, go do some steep turns and touch and goes for kicks and giggles, sign me up. And don't say instructing, because it's not the same and you know it. Airlines pay crap everywhere to start out with. Well I've got bills to pay and flying airplanes is one of the best marketable skills I have. There are a lot of fun things I wish I could do instead but I can't get paid to just have fun.

And I'm going to respectfully disagree that flying a 172 requires more decision making skills than a transport category aircraft. More hand flying skills, perhaps, depending on how much you use the automation, but there are WAY more decisions to be made in an airline cockpit than whether or not I've got my carb heat on. Unless of course you're deviating your 172 around weather going 250kts with 10 minutes of extra fuel and a guy in the back with chest pains.