I started flying jets on the Boeing 707. It was a clockwork airplane with three flight deck crew. There was often a steep authority gradient in the flightdeck, that was to some extent modified by the presence of the third crewman. The technology of the era meant that each pilot and flight engineer worked much harder on a purely mental level, and the levels of monitoring reflected the reliability of that era. Again this was modified by the contribution of the third crewmember. Despite all of this, there was still time to chat, read the newspaper and drink coffee and eat meals on trays or should that be entrees on trays?
The 707 was eventually replaced with the 757. Basically the same airplane with some lighter plastic bits and two big quiet engines rather than 4 small noisy ones. It was sold to airline managements around the world as the latest thing in technology and cost saving. The clockwork panels had been replaced with 80's technology TV sets. The more reliable autopilot could be linked into the new cutting edge 200kb electronic adding machines for greater efficiency. Electronic monitoring and pictoral navigation meant that the Flight engineers could all be retired and the pilots workload would actually be reduced, provided everything worked as it should. So it came to be that the systems were reasonably reliable and the pilots monitoring role became far greater as a result. Of course the microchips didn't monitor the pilots very well as the engineer used to, so a new emphasis on monitoring each other was given an added impetus with the promotion of various self awareness programmes under the umbrella of acronyms such as CRM.
As things advanced, so automation and electronic systems monitoring advanced, to the point that designers told pilots they wouldn't be allowed to make mistakes and the systems would where necessary intervene to correct. This often proved erroneous and required a new set of learning disciplines. The clockwork pilots were painfully aware that their own manual flying skills were dulled by the lack of actual opportunites to practice them. Nevertheless there was always a realization that the same fundamentals and awareness that kept the 707 flying, was what provided the actual backup to all these cyan/magenta, four letter acronym electronic abacuses, failing!
As things progressed further, it seemed superfluous to require 2 experienced pilots being expensively employed in the flight deck. Regulators and manufacturers wouldn't permit a single crew operation, but they did allow a much more flexible arrangement whereby the first officers role, became more monitoring based and new technology dependant. That didn't prove too traumatic as there was still an underlying element of realisation that in default there was still a 707 lurking underneath. However it did allow the costings of the flightdeck wages to be depressed thereby improving the companies bottom line.
Despite this new technology, there were warning signs! A few of these new aircraft were being dredged from the ocean floor, or scrapped off mountain sides because of pitot tube or static vent blockages or computer input error causing electronic confusion and basic loss of situational awareness to the overly reliant crews. To a greater or lesser extent this is continuing now.
As even newer technology is introduced with the advent of new aircraft such as the 787 and A350 which will still be flying beyond 2050, reliability will improve and the opportunity for cost savings will increase further. However it would be very foolish and short sighted of CEO's and industry regulators to forget that despite the smart new clothes, there is still a 707 underneath and the same disciplines and awareness that routinely kept those aircraft flying safely, are the default positions and basics that should be tought, learned, practiced, reinforced and remembered by the new generation of pilots. It should also be learned, tought, reinforced and remembered by the company CEO's that those skills come at a price that reflects the importance of those skills. Few companies survive the TV images of their coporate logos bobbing about on the oceans surface, or smoking on a hillside. That only has to happen once!