Autopilot babies and paint-by-numbers piloting are not new ideas. Back in 1942 a Marine Corps Major wrote about it. People were calling anything past a gentle bank a stunt. We needed pilots to know the full envelope of flight then — and now.
You can’t learn this type of flying out of textbooks … It seems rather silly to be explaining the term “airmanship.” But it has been necessary and is still necessary and will be necessary until people learn to speak of perfectly executed aerial maneuvers as “airmanship” instead of “stunts”.
Major Al Williams, 29 April 1942.