Checklists are there for a reason.
They take the decision making AWAY from the pilot(s), so emotion and stress have less of an impact. Boeing instructors and designers argue over drawn out meetings as to precisely what is written when and how.
While a knowledge of the QRH is very, very useful, pilots let "expectancy" take over and assume they know the checklist and race through it. And of course, everyone knows better than the designers, the testers and manufacturers of the aeroplane!!!
The FCOM and QRH even teach you how to use the checklists!!
Memory / Recall Items are also there for a reason, ie when timely action is required. Even then, there are only 2 x instances in aviation that I can think of where there is little room for delay: engine fire and depressurisation. Even then (!!!!) methodical use of the published procedures as recall actions are to be done. The best pilots I've seen do these actions in a deliberate and methodical pace, never panicking and racing.
So, we come full circle.
Do we dare question the training standards at this / these airlines? Or should we just blame the pilot doing what he thought was correct as that is all the training he ever knew or understood?
Repeating myself from previuos posts: At Air India I witnessed pilots being checked to line and passed in the sim who could not either fly straight and level with the AP and FD's off (or at times even with FD's ON!), manually fly a circuit or land with a 15 kt cross wind using raw data, and so on.... They were passed by the airline's TRE. So, as far as they were concerned they are competant pilots as the
SYSTEM told them they were.