Originally Posted by
ninerdriver
Most are pretty good, actually. I'd say about 75% of the captains with whom I fly handfly on the way up to 10000' or so, then turn it off somewhere around 1000' on the way down, so they have practice at it.
There are definitely some outliers. The worst are the 600 on, 400 off pilots when they have to fly something other than an ILS. For every one of those, though, there's also another pilot who turns the FD off at 400' up and flies raw data like a champ.
You are kidding me right? Hand flying an uninterrupted climb builds zero skill. Hand fly a visual from 50 miles out. Through configuration changes. My airline encourages it.