Answering to the last three posts:
It is a fact that the MD11 is less forgiving than the recent Airbus and Boeing models. Having said that, we could simply ban the Maddog and live happily ever after. But .....
It was controllable for the more specifically trained and experienced pilots, or those having flown DC10 or MD80, in general older models with more hands on requirements.
If we settle for the more gentle aircraft of today and accept the more limited pilot skill level as to fly those, we will most probably continue down the automation/protection road. The new pilots being operators, good ones, but only operators. The newer generation models will be even more forgiving and protected and their pilots even less required to have any rear side skills no more.
We will all be fat, dumb and happy, however ......
As we discover more and more, even the highly developed automatics have their bumps and programing every possible event is impossible. As we see, automation when it senses errors or no data, simply throws the aircraft back to the pilots. That's per design!!
In recent incidents we unfortunately detect, that many pilots seem unable to cope with such situations.
Either we achieve an absolutely foolproof design, or we have to keep the pilots up to speed, as to be able to at least stabilize an aircraft that momentarily goes into manual with sometimes erratic displays.
The choice is simple and coming back to the MD11 example, we are already in a catch 22 with this model.
Either train the pilots and let them get experience, or scrap the model.
But again, we will be back to square one in a few years with the minimalistic and way too synthetic training we give our successors.