There have been so many of these loss of control on dark night fatal crashes that it is hard to know what was the initial start of the accident sequence. Was it poor knowledge of automatics? Was it simply poor instrument flying ability?
The crash that really made up my mind where the problem lay was, I think, the Eygpt Air 737 that departed on a dark night and within five minutes was out of control in a steep spiral dive with the captain who was PF repeatedly shouting at his first officer the words "ENGAGE THE AUTOPILOT -ENGAGE AUTOPILOT" How chilling is that when the captain had no idea what he was doing and wanted the automatic pilot to save his life.
There is something deadly wrong with a system that permits some one like that to be in command of an airliner...