Thankyou for your response, Maximum.
I, in turn, am slightly puzzled by what you say, feeling it to be contradictory.
I made no comment on who or who was not flying the Gulf Air flight. I merely said that accidents of that type are likely to increase as a proportion of all accidents.
Nor do I believe in 'the good old days'. It is certainly the case that 'good old pilots' are likely to have more problems adjusting to glass cockpits than young pilots who have known nothing else. If I confused that issue by the way I wrote, then I apologise.
However I stand by my proposition that regardless of the technological level of the aircraft, deep level knowledge of the principles of flight are an essential asset -including and possibly especially when an Airbus experiences an engine fire on take off.
I agree entirely with you, and disagree entirely with the Guv'nor, on the subject of pilots viewed as 'systems monitors'.
But the main problem for me is not that. While I understand what is involved in navigating into a busy TMA (I have jump seated into Gatwick on 6 occasions, and my son does it 10 times a week from the LHS)that is a normal expectation of the job.
For me what defines the professionalism of pilots is what they hope never to need to demonstrate operationally - the management of critical incidents which exceed the technical capabilities of the aircraft to self correct. And for those, purely technical competence is not enough by definition. Such occasions will never be totally eliminated by technical solutions because the cost of eliminating the last few scenarios is too high. Hence - no planes without pilots when there are passengers aboard.
Given the foregoing I never want to be a passenger on an aircraft where the pilot's training is such that s/he can do everything in the manual perfectly, and can handle everything that the simulator can throw up, but can't improvise when all else fails. It does not matter to me that such occasions are becoming statistically less common.