bubbers44;
15 years from now will tell the story on how depending on automation to fly the airplane and not being required to have basic hand flying skills will work out. I think I know the answer. The old pilots will be gone then and just the new pilots will be in control.
Yes, I think so; - We may even know before then, depending upon how the accident reports go. A simple example comes to mind right away - fatigue. Twenty years ago there was no such thing as fatigue, all accidents were "pilot error", if an organization made its pilots do things that were unsafe, that was totally the pilots' fault; Thirty to fourty years ago, initial courses required one to be able to comprehend systems, sometimes draw them and otherwise know the nuts and bolts. I know one organization that required their crews to be able to send and receive morse code at 5wpm, and before an entry into Kennedy or O'Hare was permitted, to draw the entire terminal area from memory including all the nav-aid frequencies, airways and their tracks.
So, competency and automation accidents, which are essentially invisible to the flight safety and accident investigation process today, may, like the issue of fatigue, begin to gather sufficient legitimacy to actually make it into primary causes.
When that happens, maybe we'll see a turnaround in the present approach which puts MCPL amateurs in seasoned professionals' shoes and return the cockpit to the left and right seats instead of desk-ridden MBA's and other beancounters in windowless offices facing a computer screen who know nothing of the front line. Sorry - I know that sounds unkind and it is NOT personal or focussed on "who". It is the "what" that will bite this industry every time.