There’s no question in my mind that a good autopilot system tends to dull a pilot to what the airplane is doing and what it may be telling him or her. I’m fortunate to have a really good one in my traveling airplane and use it most of the time when I’m in cruising flight. It will fly a heading, follow a magenta line, climb/descend to a preset altitude at a rate of my choosing and shoot coupled ILS or GPS approaches.
But I still have to take off and land manually. Since it’s dumb enough to pitch the airplane’s nose way up in a downdraft, irrespective of airspeed, I still have to disengage it sometimes in bumpy weather. Like all automation, sometimes it doesn’t do what I want, when I want it. And when some other component of the airplane soils the bed, it’s a good idea to disengage the autopilot and hand-fly until the situation is resolved, if for no other reason to ensure I can feel what the airplane is doing at times of uncertainty.
