A quick postscript re: ColganAir 4805 -
While the situations look superficially similar (pilots out of their depth fumbling the controls), the human factors aspects are considerably different in nature.
Firstly to address Lyman's point, it wasn't just the F/O in the Colgan case who made fatal mistakes, it was the Captain too. While it's true he was inexperienced and apparently below average in terms of ability, the crux of the matter was that in a sane world, both pilots should have called in sick that day - both for exhaustion, and the F/O for what appeared to have been either a bad cold or mild 'flu on top of that.
But Colgan, along with most if not all regional subcontractors at the time, operated a business model in which exhausted pilots were the norm, and that exhaustion was a direct result of those pilots being underpaid and undervalued, while the beancounters and management crowed about their profit margins despite rock-bottom fares. I'm tempted to go on a tear about deregulation, but I'll leave it for now. All I will say is that if I were king, the Colgan executives would have been up on as many corporate malfeasance charges as I could find, and a new statute of corporate murder created just for them.
Air France has had it's troubles over the last decade or two, there's no doubt about that - but for the most part it has treated it's pilots as well as your average flag carrier as far as I know. The misapplication of automation and atrophy of manual skills/aeronautical knowledge is not restricted to them. None of AF447's crew were sick or exhausted, they simply ended up in a situation that was beyond their abilities to understand in time - and what started as a benevolent gesture from the Captain (designating PF as relief pilot) had the unfortunate consequence of putting the least experienced crew member in charge when things started going wrong.