We've had centuries of experience with sheet metal but very little by comparison dealing with composite layups.
We have about half a century of experience with repairing composite gliders. It all started even before the US manufacturers started to mount jet engines on their passenger aircraft... We have repaired hundreds of broken wings, which would have been scrapped if they would have been made from metal! Just imagine repairing a metal wing spar broken of close to the wing root. For composite it often is possible to repair such damage, and it is indeed done on a regular basis. However, it needs a totally different level of skilled repairmen to perform this, and I agree, there are not too many of them around.