Although I am keenly aware of what the thread is about, piloting skills are relative.
Let me expand on what is meant by this.
A good friend was describing an approach in the south Pacific where the "strip" was carved out of a hillside - 11m wide, 400m long with an 18% grade. If one didn't add power after touchdown, one didn't get to the end and wasn't able to do the next takeoff downhill. All that is seen in the flare is blue sky. Charts (where available) for these airports have "over-run instructions" on which way to turn in case of the overrun so as not to hit the school, the hospital or go over the cliff.
While my own skills were atuned to the 320/330/340 types in both hand-flying and autoflight, I'd be dead in a week on the coast of BC in the winter or in some south Pacific islands as described above without easing into it and practising. Same goes for most of us I suspect.
Suffice it to say that in large transport flying, if one can change control regimes from fully automated flight to fully manual flight (raw data, no f/d's, autothrust off) and back again at any time, under any circumstances without the passengers once noticing, one probably has sufficient skills to cover off almost all situations.
We are not expected to have test pilot skills nor are we expected to out-guess the designers of the aircraft be they Boeing or Airbus. Beyond the QRH we are not expected to troubleshoot an abnormality. We are expected to operate by the book and where the book is silent or the safety of flight is threatened, to use airmanship and the authority of the pilot-in-command to make the best decision(s) possible.
Though we are solely responsible for our flight, we are no longer "on our own" in the cockpit and thus may expect the broad support of scheduling, dispatch, maintenance, ATC, weather forecasters and the regulators, and that they will do their jobs just as we do. The current fatal accident rate mirrors the success of this approach but as we know, "nothing fails like success" and a level of vigilance mixed with a bit of crankiness is always needed when commercial priorities begin to creep beyond safety priorities.