Thanks very much for the very detailed answers. Strangely it seems that although these automated systems were designed to reduce pilot workload, in the end the pilot still needs to make sure he is aware exactly of all the settings he needs to be monitoring and what the computer is doing with them. It appears that when things go (very) wrong, the amount of info suddenly thrown at the pilots is astounding. I'm sure that in the heat of the moment, it would be very easy to miss something that might seem quite basic when you're calmly sitting on the ground, and not about to plunge into the south atlantic with a plane full of pax. I'm just a lowly PPL but my instructor has done a good job of beating this into my head: "Don't forget to fly the plane". With the increased use of automation, is there a tendency for pilots to get sucked into the screens troubleshooting errors and forgetting the basics when things go wrong? Obviously errors need to be resolved but I wonder if this is addressed in training, as I'm sure it can be very tempting to bust out all the checklists and start addressing warnings when a shiny screen is blinking at you before dealing with possibly more basic and critical problems.