Originally Posted by Centaurus
Automation complacency again?
I don't like the term "complacency" in this context. I don't believe crew after crew in these situations are complacent; they are reliant, which is against their training, but only natural as humans get subconsciously seduced by the wizardry.
Before a lot of people are killed in these situations, either pilots need to be removed from cockpits completely so human error can never occur, or there should be a concentrated effort to improve monitoring skills. The only way that will occur is by making pilots do this stuff manually, regularly. Only then will they be in a critical, monitoring mode when it really counts, close to the ground, because they will know how to do it themselves, and so will know what the automatics are doing when the aircraft is (trying to) doing it.