once upon a time there were aircraft flown by gentlemen and heroes. They were heroes cos the aircraft always got into some sort of a fix and technology was unreliable. Too many accidents though.
Slowly but surely the technology improved but accidents were still there. In fact the highest accident rate was CFIT. So this was worked on and accidents did reduce. However accidents still remained.
Then it was discovered that those gentlemen and heroes were in fact just normal human beings who made normal human being type mistakes. So engineers went about designing out those human mistakes.
This resulted in FBW and computers replacing the flight engineer. It was a brilliant move. Accidents have reached an all time low because the technology allows for pilot mistakes to remain undetected by correcting them. Pilots still think they are in control yet the bulk of the work is accomplished inside those black boxes.
Its true that very occasionally the pilot/black box interface gets it wrong and there is a smoking hole. Fortunately this is extremely rare.
There will always be the 1 in a google case where the pilot should have had full control but implementation of this is now widely accepted as ridiculous not least because pilot full control would significantly increase the day to day accident rate.
Unfortunately too many pilots have been way behind on this working reality and it shows here on pprune. It is not intended to be rude or dismissive but pilots you were part of the accident statistic problem and this has been improved upon by automation.
I believe it is in the pilots best interests to work with and embrace the very technology that works silently in the background protecting them. AF447 is yet another unfortunate reminder that the human brain is an extremely complex and unpredictable organ and doesn't always do as we would wish or expect.
Accident statistics prove that the technology is robust. Robust but not perfect. Technology is flawed just as humans are flawed. The statistics however highlight that if we wish to eliminate accidents, then there is only one path to follow, the technology path.