No "perhaps" in it olde bean!
One person on an operating table with 100s of staff available nearby who can assist a well trained doctor is quite different to 200+ people relying on an inexperienced pilot when the experienced one has died or become capacity saturated by an unexpected in flight senario.
Again how that co-pilot was trained and his/her own experience will determine the outcome. Sadly current airline training is woefully below current medical training in terms of over reliance on automation, poor selection (more about money and multiple guess questions in EU), and lack of mentoring by senior instructors/airline staff, degraded Ts&Cs and now lower fatigue protection through EASA FTL rule changes.
Forecasts 2012: Safety & security - Our expects place their bets on what to expect in 2012
" there has been a loss of pilot exposure to *anything other than pre-packaged flight planning, followed by automated flight on the line. In unusual *circumstances - non-standard or not automated - a lack of pilot resilience has led to fatal loss of control (LOC) accidents, making LOC the biggest killer category this century - taking over from controlled flight into terrain in the last."
FAA system is looking better than EASA for both FTLs and airline pilot starter experience levels - 1500h is still a licence to learn and it needs defining in term of quality. But too many autopilot jet jockeys seem quick to criticise Flight Instructional hours - even though those Instructors are the very people who first taught and trusted them to fly an aircraft solo! Those (QFI/CFI/FI) skills were foundational for the future learning of these critics on heavier, sometimes faster machines !