Many years ago I posted on full automation. I suggested pilots were already redundant and electronics would take over within the next 20 years. Public sensibilities? We could employ actors. Then I quipped, "Oh, we already do."
It was meant to cut. I again referred to Davis' 'Handling the Big Jets' - later edition. Hey, I haven't seen a quote from that yet. Is there a single first officer that doesn't carry it with him these days?
It was all meant to shout: If humans are on the flight-deck, they MUST be able to fly the aircraft. Really fly it. Oh, and be allowed to fly it.
Twenty years on and every incident, let alone accident, will be built into the logic of civil airliners' control systems. All that will remain is what to tell the passengers. Frankly, if they believe half the horse-feathers they're fed now, they'd believe anything. They don't matter. Conveying the aircraft to destination with perfect safety is all that matters.
The entire problem that faces the industry now is how to bridge the gap from the human nervous system controlling the kit, to a total black-box industry. That really is not an easy question to answer.
Today I read of a new alloy. A molecular seeding that will make aluminum/aluminium very, very much stronger. Plastic aircraft are a stop-gap, in the same way the hybrid human/electronics control interface is. It's just getting over these years.
As an electronics bod who was later forced to fly the Zero-Reader, I know how difficult this transition period is going to be. The Zero-Reader was a smoldering pile of valves/tubes and melting rubber insulation. How the heck did it find itself advising human captains of civil aircraft?