To what degree do airline ops specs preclude hand flying? I retired in 1999. I'm curious to what degree typical airline ops specs now discourage or prohibit doing what I used to do as a matter of course insofar as hand flying.

For example, I usually hand flew the aircraft until leveling at the first cruise altitude (FL290 or FL310 on fully loaded 747-100/200 aircraft). For the step climbs as fuel was burnt, I nearly always disengaged the autopilot and did the climb manually. At the top of descent I clicked the autopilot off, and I flew approaches manually.

Many of my fellow crew members thought it odd that I did so much hand flying, but as I would explain when asked, I didn't get to the 747 until I was 50 and didn't get to its left seat until a couple of years later, and I wasn't about to forego any of the fun.

None of the hand flying I did was prohibited by our ops specs of the time. My question is: to what degree, if any, do current ops specs discourage or prohibit the hand flying I did?
There are no Ops Specs that preclude hand flying, however company policy and operational considerations do in specific situations:


Level flight within RVSM airspace 
Cat III approaches (and I believe Cat II approaches) 
High workload, critical phases of flight (company specific policies here) 


The FAA even came out with a SAFO not too long ago recommending that pilots do more hand flying during periods of low workload (and during training) with the goal of maintaining hand flying proficiency.