"The airlines now don't want you to turn the autopilot off. Training costs money."
I still go back to the basic premise that pax expect us to be able to solve the problem when the computers & automatics go on holiday. We are the last insurance policy to get them home safely. The sure as hell don't expect us to screw up on the automatics, either. Consider all the accidents we know about which were caused by mishandling a flying serviceable a/c. We've read about the scenarios where pitot or static air sources were lost and there was a crash, yet the a/c was flying. With calm thinking this should be manageable if the basic foundations of piloting skills were in place. For that to be the case it will take much more than the rudimentary tick in the box handling exercise in the sim every 3 years. Once those skills are lost it takes repeated practice to recover them and keep them honed.
Years ago it was very sad to see pilots of both ranks transfer from a needles & dials a/c to an EFIS one and throw away all the scans and skills learnt from the old generation a/c and become 'children of the magenta' and VNAV PTH disciples. FD followers rather than pilots in command. The FD could fly you into a stall or the ground, but they didn't notice what was going wrong. The industrial solution has been to build in more fail-safe systems and numerous back ups.
It has always been said that if you think safety is expensive then try an accident. This was related more to flight safety training than piloting skills, but I think ultimately it should be about piloting skills. It is said we are contribute to the crash in 70% or so of cases. One wonders, if piloting skills have been allowed to deteriorate and replaced with technology, has there been a secret risk/cost assessment made and the industry has knowingly chosen the path we are on? Great for the conspiracy theorists. But surely, when you look at the spate of accidents over the past 15 years there have been some worrying trends and little corrective reaction from the industry; more aghast head in hands asking 'how could they have done that?' The answer might be 'because you allowed it in your training and daily operating philosophy.' This debate has been going round in circles within the pilot community for years. When will the circle be broken and action taken?