We frequently find we forget to check "Automatically email to customer" when setting up recurring invoices. For 2 reasons - it's a small option and easy to miss, but primarily it seems obvious that you would want this to happen, therefore you wouldn't think of activating it as an option.
Perhaps this could be always checked by default, or at least allow an option to turn default checking on? I can't imagine many scenarios where you would want to raise an invoice, but not send it.