The recording posted by PH-UKU was certainly interesting although I would say the controller’s main contribution was to remain calm and offer small pieces of advice in a way that made the pilot feel that that he was being helped and that disaster was not certain. And I have been in a light aircraft, left hand seat, in IMC, in icing conditions and in a spin. Something my instructor called recovery from unusual attitudes. We didn’t die.
All industries go through cycles where skills are first developed and then eclipsed as new technologies are brought into play. Most pilots are considerably less experienced than were their predecessors who flew in the 1950s and 1960s. This is called progress and the economics of market forces dictate where we go. However useful Flight Engineers might be in some special circumstances they have now disappeared. The overall accident statistics improve steadily but the types of incidents we have change over time. Crews now have problems because they don’t understand the automation but the airframes, avionics and engines are all now tremendously reliable.
I’ve just come back from the Air Traffic Control Association Conference in the USA. They accepted a paper I submitted on Automation in ATC which I’ve brought to your attention in a separate thread. With the problems of capacity and costs as large as they are nobody was talking about training the controllers in traditional skills.
So, the skills that are seen as traditional will slowly disappear and newer skills in operating automated systems will take their place. Today there is absolutely no need to recruit a person who could work a sector from the 1960s. Complete familiarity with Information Technology is what is required and when universal Mode S arrives that may even apply to the person in the VCR because capacity is needed even when the visibility is 50 meters. And in that case is it a VCR?
I still believe the proposals on my website (polemic said one of you) will be the future.