For what it's worth
First up - I'm a regular member of the SLF community. The closest I can claim to understanding the intricacies of what happened on AF447 other than as a layman is a psychology degree (from Manchester University when a certain Swiss cheese theory Jim Reason was at the helm of the Psychology Department). I've been following the discussions on here since the incident in 2009 - thank you for everyone, irrespective of what side of the fence you're on with regard to the unending man vs. machine automation debate. It's been illuminating, fascinating and reassuring to see the unfortunate event dissected and debated by professionals from all walks of life. One hopes that through debates like these, things can only get better.
So my tuppence for what it's worth... From my understanding of the report (which I think overall reads as thorough and even handed), clearly there were some issues in terms of BOTH crew resource management and ergonomics in times of high stress, but the thing that screams out to me as fundamentally wrong in terms of 'how can this be!', is on page 192 of the report: The copilots had not undertaken any in-flight training, at high altitude, for the “vol avec IAS douteuse” procedure or on manual aeroplane handling I find that fact absolutely terrifying - irrespective of how automated the plane is I would have thought that advanced manual airmanship skills should be mandatory for any commercial pilot, irrespective of altitude!. Indeed I can't help but notice a correlation between the well publicised potentially fatal incidents which have been averted, thanks to the fantastic skills and experience of the pilot. Notable of course (and a completely unrelated incident), is of course the one on the Hudson where the pilot was a keen glider. Everyone travelling on that flight was obviously very lucky to have that particular pilot at the controls, but surely we should be looking to reduce the role of 'luck'. But what do I know...
So my question for the pilots out there: Could airlines ever be persuaded to go back to basics and do more to boost the manual flying skills of commercial pilots, irrespective of the level of automation on a designated aircraft?... Indeed completely change the structure of training so that when training on a specific aircraft, pilots start 'manual', with automation added, layer by layer? (adding layers to the onion so to speak)... Ultimately, so that every pilot is confident (relatively speaking), and knows what it feels like, to fly said aircraft when controls / automation have gone t*ts up?
Excuse my ignorance and sorry for interrupting - I'll continue lurking for now. Many thanks again for everyone's contribution