Being deteriorating for years, as the airlines have taken away the ability of pilots to think for themselves. Manuals, computers, so much information being taken in by the brain, leaves the pilot little time to develop "airmanship". Add to that, not as many pilots coming thru GA, and learning slowly but surely about their own ability, their own reactions, and their own problem solving solutions. In my day, for want of a better word, we learnt to listen to the aircraft thru our "arse". A sixth sense that developed over a period of time, and not learnt from a manual or a Sim. For all the bells and whistles modern day aircraft can still become just another aircraft in peril (as the A380 skipper found out) fortunately he was a pilot with airmanship, that would have been installed in him from his RAAF days, and it showed. It will be a sorry day when pilots simply become systems managers, and that is where it is heading. As one pilot blogged earlier on this site, he has to fly a "lighty" every so often to reconnect to flying for flyings sake, where we were lucky, to fly aircraft that still required flying, enjoyable flying, but none of us ever trusted the bastards, never.