Originally Posted by
Woger Wabbit
You say you shouldn't generalize and then you kinda generalize by saying 90 percent of the CAs you fly with rely on the autopilot way too much.
I don't think it's that they "can't" handle the workload, but more that they don't "want" to handle it sometimes.
With that said, there's nothing wrong with hand flying, and most shouldn't have a problem with it unless it's some complex RNAV departure that you're doing, or it's the fifth leg of the day and fatigue is maybe setting in. Hopefully you're at least briefing that you're going to do that out of courtesy.
Some day if you're lucky, you'll have racked up many many more hours than you currently have, and then you'll fly with someone with 700 who decides to hand fly it when you're tired and maybe not in the mood for extra work. Then he'll complain on Internet forums that 90 percent of the captains he flies with can't handle something they've been doing for decades. As Barkley and the TNT gang would say...C'mon man.
His own-goal about generalizing aside, I've had roughly the same experience as him.
When they're "not in the mood for the extra work"
every single time (no matter which leg of the day it is, how busy/quiet the airspace is, how nice the weather is, etc.) it's concerning. No matter how many hours the other guy has racked up, they don't give me any confidence, as someone riding in the back, if it's all a repetition of the same hour flown by the autopilot until the airplane is configured, on-speed, on localizer, and on glideslope.
(And proficiency and safety aside, isn't flying the airplane at least on a nice day into a quiet airport something one would
want to do for enjoyment as a pilot, and not something to have to look for a reason to overcome all the excuses not to?)