Reading the last 20 or so pages in the Amsterdam Turkish Airline crash threat, one might get worried when boarding a plane. Ongoing discussions about whether or not landings should be done manually occassionally, whether or not A/T is active during the entire flight (if I understand correctly), whether or not more automation is required on the flight deck, whether or not a number of sim trainings are sufficient and in one of the last threats a suggestion that in a few years time the plane will not require pilots anymore, yet just 2 flight engineers.
As a non-pilot it makes you wonder whether there still is a balance between automation and flying. Clearly there still is, since only a small number of aircraft crash. No ones knows what the future brings, but I am slighty worried about over-reliance on automation which may already be happening sometimes, but is more likely to happen in the future as automation will increase.
By the end of the day, whenever I board an aircraft, I expect the aircraft to be in good condition and the pilots to be skilled and well-trained, and capable of landing the aircraft safely whenever things go pear-shaped. And occassionally that will happen, which is why you need pilots, not flight engineers.