Originally Posted by
tailwheel48
Reliance on automation, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. If I was in the back of a Cathay B777 executing an engine out missed approach in Hong Kong, I would hope that the automation was working properly, and that the crew was using it. Quite frankly it's foolish to expect a pilot to hand-fly a complex arrival into a busy international airport after a long haul flight. All you're going to accomplish, is to overload the monitoring pilot.
For the handful of situations where automation has contributed to an accident or incident, there are likely thousands of 'situations' where automation has prevented something bad from happening.
For the most part, widebody long-haul crews may get to fly two or three legs a month. Trying to pretend that you're as proficient at hand flying as a guppy driver who flies forty legs a month into low risk airports is a fools errand.
As a professional pilot, it's expected you can do both. Fully utilize the tools of the airplane, and hand fly when they fail. Reliance on automation is a serious problem, as is not understanding how it works.