money
its all about money.
my huge airline use to have mechanics at each and every airport we served. From a Chicago to an Elmyra, From a New York to a Scranton.
but some money guy said: why not just have MX at the big stations/airports?
all those guys lost their jobs or had to move hundreds of miles and now...at those airports that don't have MX...we call upon the expertise of a ''contract'' mechanic. We call him off the piper he was working on to work on a boeing or a douglas.
Yeah, right.
I recall that during WW2, the bombardier was quite important to mission success on the B17's over europe. Later on , a lesser form of bombardier was trained to just toggle the bomb release switch when he saw the other bombs starting to fall. He was called a "togalier". A dumbed down bombardier.
We are dumbing down the pilot so that he can't do much of anything except press the buttons.