Originally Posted by
450knotOffice
As for his statement about the AP flying better than we can? I'm a guy who flies all takeoffs up to maybe 15,000 feet and 320 KIAS and pointed where we're going. I hand fly most, if not all approaches - day, night, good weather, and bad. I pride myself on my hand flying skills (Damn it, I BETTER know how to fly an airplane well), but c'mon! I'm the first to admit that any modern AP can embarrass my own hand flying skills. Any of you out there who say otherwise are simply kidding yourselves.
The autopilot can perhaps fly more precise than we can, holding a heading, course or altitude with less error tolerance. But the guy whole clicks off the autopilot on a visual, as opposed setting the autopilot up to fly the approach can easily do it smoother. Also I've seen many autopilots (flight directors) chase airspeeds, giving a horrible ride, because the computer doesn't have any idea what the required pitch is for the selected speed.