Excellent thread BOAC!
However, some misconceptions about FBW and flying the modern transport aeroplane posted here really give me creeps, because I suspect that they are so widespread and wrongfully accepted to be true that there might be some FTOs/TRTOs/CAAs/airlines basing their policies on them.
Our 'new' pilots don't really need the old-fasioned basic flying skills, since these systems prevent abuse/mishandling.
That's a folly that can turn out to be fatal too easily. From personal experience, the skills needed to fly A320 safely are not much different from skills required on ATR-42 or DHC-8 Q400. Sadly, too many lives and airframes were lost in proving that one can stay well clear of all the FBW protections and yet wreck the aeroplane. A320 FBW can prevent overbank, overspeed, overload or stall. It cannot recognize that the runway is wet and that landing fast and long is not a good idea. You still need head mounted computer to resolve that.
Lets not fool ourselves; the ultimate goal of FBW is to facilitate aerodynamically unstable passenger transports with the fuel savings that that would bring.
Hopefully not. Even if it were true, the certification requirements would have to be changed for worse. As it is, A320 is flying sweetly and handling docilely in direct law, when there are no protections, there is direct stick-to-control-displacement and trim is manual via pitch wheel. From what I've gathered about 777 and E-jets, to get them certified, their manufacturers needed to prove that they can be safely flown in degraded FBW modes, so it seems that no current FBW transport aeroplane is unstable. May it long remain so.
Pilots due their human nature were and still are the weakest link in the chain (that is not intended to be derogatory just fact).
Sometimes they are, but it is not to be taken for granted. I was unable to find a single instance where "pilot error" was not facilitated by some systemic error, like: low quality initial training, insufficient recurrent training, weak regulatory oversight, badly designed procedures, lousy cockpit ergonomics, management pressure.... just name it, there are tons of them. It's unfair for two guys/gals at the pointy end to get all the glory when all goes well. It's even more unfair to unload all the blame on them when it doesn't.
The pilots do not FLY anymore: they punch keys and buttons.
It's a misperception. People whose skills end with punching the buttons are not pilots, they are system operators and are not supposed to be allowed in the flight deck (in the perfect world, anyway). Pilots fly and continue to fly when systems fail. When computers tumble, system operators have nothing to fall back upon.