Originally Posted by OC
I rather think we need to be very careful in talking about 'deteriorating skills' because of increased automation. A cursuory examination of past accidents will show many, many examples of where piloting skills were lacking and these on unautomated aircraft where piloting skills were required. Automation has improved aircraft safety immeasurably.......
OC, deteriorating aircraft handling skill level for pilots of
automated aircraft are a fact of life. The reasons are myriad but are frequently discussed on a number of threads on this forum. We have always been crashing a lot of
un-automated aircraft through the years, mostly for the reason of pilots attempting to fly beyond their abilities/training.
Airlines see pilot training as a business case expense, IMHO there will be no dramatic investment in better/more pilot training.
(There is probably room for simple desktop trainers to maintain basic instrument skills in the budget. That is where they will likely get the best bang for the buck. As a suggestion, airlines could put several of these in pilot lounges and provide incentives for using them.)
That leaves better automatic systems to keep the pilots in their 'executive cocoon' while the computers re-configure the aircraft to keep on trucking. This is controversial of course, but allows safety to be improved with minimal cost. How many accidents can you think of that resulted from pilot mis-application of emergency procedures?