Again, we don't pay pilots to fly the plane, we pay pilots to handle the exceptions.
Bugger, that's where I've been going wrong all these years (+25 now).
I guess then that all my years as a Search and Rescue Captain must have been one huge, long exception then.
Pilots are paid to fly the aircraft as, even with all the new sophisticated gadgetry in the front, the automatic systems cannot cope with every variable that good old mother nature can throw at us. Not exceptions but just the inability of any logic system to be able to cope with potentially infinite variables and the wish to portray a comfortable flight to the paying guests.
Unlike accountants, programmers, lawyers, doctors etc. a pilot or the pilots are sometimes in the uneviable position where a screw up/misunderstood warning or complex multiple failures will result in something a little more catestrophic than a messed up balance sheet or an angry Factory owner. Doctors generally only get the change to kill one person at a time, pilots have the ability to do it by the hundreds.
Experience is a double edged sword. In my experience (!!!!) many failings in the past, including CFIT and routine systems failures have been caused by contempt and familiarity bred from routine and the ability to portray a malfunction as 'normal'. The junior Co, with his fresh, enthusiastic approach to aviation has often been the saviour of the crusty experienced Captain (Sadly I include myself in this comment!) as systems failures seem less complex to the Co than the Captain and the ability to feed accurate information from the system into the Captains decision making process is imperitive.
There is room for all levels in aviation it is just beholden upon the schedulers to ensure that the sum of the cockpit experience level doesn't dip too far.
Generally it has been well controlled in the past and will, hopefully, be so in the future.
WS.
Still hand flying, still being paid to fly. Even an Airbus without the damn computers is still an aeroplane (just).
