"...have my reservations. My experience is that automation operating skills are an entirely different animal to pure flying ability. I have seen pilots in the simulator operate the automatics with great aplomb with the result usually a splendidly flown ILS by the automatic pilot. OK so they may spear off the centre-line on to the grass after touch down sideways on a wet runway but hey - you can't expect perfection after a career on automatics"
Not sure how to react to that comment. I'm 55 years of age and now exclusively short-haul, but I still spend some of my 'play time' in gliders and single engine VFR, and helping teenagers acquire a PPL. My day job involves the ultimate in automation (
) but I still need to keep my eye on the ball.
Most of the time, I trust the electronics. However, I have a food-processor that sometimes bites me and a digital alarm clock that takes the p155 on occasion. Basically, anthing electrical or mechanical has the ability to go wrong, just as does anything human.
Automation is wonderful, but it's still an assistant, rather than a master. Basic flying skills will always triumph in the (admittedly very) few occsasions when it all goes totally t*ts up.
Frankly, the training of pilots to become slaves to automation is worrying in my opinion, but hey, I may be wrong. Still, in the very few cases where all the holes have lined up, it seems that the times it's all come right were when good old basic skills were employed. Far too often quoted, but Sullenberger did the job right by using glider-pilot skills, not by trusting electronics.
Rely on machinery by all means, but have the basic skills to intervene when the hounds of hell escape from their cage, or you'll just end up as a statistic.