3 hours ago, roi1862 said:

I still stand behind my assumption that the 47 minutes long video was to buy more time. How much time ? Good question. I would guess end of March at the earliest. 

Well that didnt age well...

19 minutes ago, antic81 said:

However, saying that, do you not think there is a danger in skill fade if you are on automatics at 400 feet and then Autoflight off at 1200 ft?

I do think there is that danger. But there are so many aspects to take into account. First off all, flight safety has to be put above everything. The flying skills can be trained on aircrafts which made for hand flying. It should not be preferenced to do this while about 200 souls sitting behind you. There are also many pilots and carriers, who haven´t gone to the grip in understandig, what the Airbus SOP phylosophy really means for flight safety. I. ex. the autothrust. The way, the throttle unit of an A320 is designed, give very limited power control to the pilots, compared to other aircrafts. It´s just not meant to be used like that. No human pilot is able to control the engines so precisely like the computer can do. That´s the reason, why most of the airlines prefer their pilots always use autothrust to take the wear and mainainance cost as low as possible. 

There is today a significant  difference between militäry or private pilots and airline pilots. From an airline pilot is exspected that he is more a systemanager, managing the aircraft acting as safe and precise as possible, using all the nice gadgets given by the manufacturers to improve the capabilities to operate the ac at the highest possible level. 

The danger of loosing skills should not be overcounted. Of course it´s not as easy as that, but i. ex. i´am driving for more then 20 years only cars with automatic gear. But if i take a car with manual gear, i have absolute no problem to control it, as i never drove a different one.😉 

11 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Well that didnt age well...

lol sure didnt. 🙂 

11 minutes ago, BerndB said:

I do think there is that danger.

It is a recommendation from aviation organizations, including FAA. Here is one of many examples of articles on the subject.
 

https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/maintaining-manual-skills/

6 hours ago, polosim said:

It is a recommendation from aviation organizations, including FAA. Here is one of many examples of articles on the subject.
 

https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/maintaining-manual-skills/

Yes, i do not disagree general speaking. But you know aswell, the opinions varies all over the world. Here in Europe and Germany for instance, we´re more likely to rely on the high level of automation this specific aircraft provides. That´s why we have it developed. But we also aware about the cons, like loosing skills, or the awareness of basic computations like CG, load & balance etc. That´s why some airlines in Europe already give more space for manual skills, but try to assure, that the flight crews always stay aware about, why and when it´s preferred to fly "managed"

But honestly, while writing these words, i feel a little bit sorry about how this threat has developed. It wasn´t my intention to hijack the post from the op. I just wanted to head up for differentiation between all the good, bad, half true and partly wrong  information you can get from everywhere.