Cypher,
No windup intended....It is fact.....If you screw up so badly in the RHS the Captain should take over. If the Captain does not do that then both pilots have screwed up royally. That theoretically should never happen in RPT. Training and in particular repetitive action dictates so. The QRH determines what to do in most if not all circumstances and if not followed verbatim that then leaves the pilots in for tea and bickies. Follow the training and the manuals and you would be a very unlucky RPT pilot to experience anything close to a fatality, which does not compare to a medical professional who holds life and death in their hands every day, if not every hour of every shift. Do not make the profession out to be something it is not.
Sumtingwrong,
Again the training that goes on does not allow things to go wrong unless the pilot does something he is trained not to do (And this should never happen in RPT). Light comes on, open book, follow instructions. Not rocket science. When everything goes pair shaped that is when the money is earned, and as far as fatalities go that is very rare. For example with the right training my mum could listen and obey a TCAS warning (provided she had the prerequrisite flying skills) and she would avoid what could be called a potential disaster)....This is what training and procedures are all about.
The doctor that receives an unconcious patient in the emergency ward has no such QRH to follow.....He has to determine what is wrong and how to deal with it in order to save a life. This happens day in and day out for a lot of medical professionals.
How many times in a professional RPT pilots career would they honestly say to themselves that the situation they found themselves in and the actions they took outside of their repetitive training was what saved hundreds of lives.
Again....Back down to earth fellas......This is why the profession is regulated the way it is and the oversight is the way it is, and this is why tens of thousands of aircraft take to the skies every day with very few RPT fatalities......
In the event of a mechanical failure then I agree the flying skill and experience come into play big time, however this is more than extremely rare and to insinuate that this kind of skill is required for RPT pilots is what the real wind up is.