I am neither an airline pilot nor have I read the whole thread. But with 36 years of flying over 90 aircraft types in harsh conditions, I believe I have valid and original inputs to enrich the discussion. I served among other positions as chief experimental pilot in a world renown organization, and was invited at NASA's initiative to fly the space shuttle initial tests.
In a NASA research report I read 5 years ago, 18 out of 19 B744 pilots of all experience levels failed to recognize important situations such as below glidepath on approach or PFD erroneous annunciations- in a simulator.
I read accident reports in which pilots failed to respond to simple problems, such as captain's airspeed indication error on B757 takeoff, leading to uncontrolled flight into the ocean 2 minutes later (3 additional crews repeated this in the investigation simulation), an A310 losing its tail due to captain's overcontrol following entry to wake turbulence after takeoff. Two MD-11Fs of one airline crashed and burned during manual landings with wind. Many "et cetera"s! Notably a different level of piloting was exhibited on the recent Hudson river landing. Here is my reading of all this:
1. Advanced cockpit automation poses serious challenges to the cockpit crew upon sudden or complicated failures. Pilots learn to rely on and trust automation, thus reducing their guard and proficiency. System redundancy, fail operate etc... offer improved safety and performance, such as CAT IIIb, at the cost of design and operation complication. CRM has added a measure of improved task management, but psychologists have gotten too deep into the cockpit, often complicating pilot life by adding tasks unnecessarily. There are moments when pilots are practically breathless, while aircraft automation can perform 95% of work idependently. Having flown years manually aircraft with poor inherent handling qualities, I can appreciate automation.
2. Due to market demand and growing aviation costs, quite a few pilots get to heavy transports, with private school PPLs, a few hundred flight hours in prop regionals, and a well written resume. Many therefore lack profound knowledge and experience of flight at aircraft envelope boundaries, more than 30 degrees away from the horizon or bank angle, flight near stall let alone spin, like many of us including the Hudson Airbus captain have. Those partially trained have limited ability to respond to unexpected flight emergencies.
3. Private schools tend to accept anyone healthy, capable of making the payments, and with security clearance. How many make personality selection, evaluating psycho-motoric, cognitive, and personality qualities? Vital for quality handling of complicated situations.
All these are key elements for the reduction of flight accidents by an order of magnitude. When incorporated intelligently they will reduce aviation cost, not increase it. Like anything done right.