A while ago I was shooting the breeze with a private pilot who was scratching his head about an interaction he’d had in the air with a QantasLink pilot about the ‘transition layer’. I had to explain what the transition layer is and why he wasn’t supposed to have cruised in it...
I don’t think it’s about the absence of briefing offices, CM. I think it’s more about the slow mediocritization of the instructing system. And the ever-increasing level of regulatory complexity means there’s far more trivial regulatory chaff distracting from the airmanship wheat.