Can we return to the thread topic?
Capital idea.
This thought seems to be worth comment within the context of the accident under discussion.
3. For this reason, there is something fundamentally wrong, I think, with counting hours of watching autopilot do its thing as “flying experience.”
With the emergence of present day-autopilots the process of judging pilots' experience should have been redefined long ago.
One way to do it would be to count takeoffs and landings, which would promote pilots who did time on smaller planes long before they were allowed to touch commercial jets.
However, I do not see pilots talking about changing that system. Maybe they should.
There is quite a bit to chew on regarding this nested set of thoughts. One of the ways the "system" mitigates for errors in selection is that there is a team, a crew, on the flight deck who are, if you believe the CRM principles in vogue, in a position to detect and correct one another's errors, or help out when task loading factor is greater than one pilot.
This isn't the only accident where two pilots were not enough, due to a variety of factors.
Also, I find "takeoffs and landings" a bit misleading, since the entire terminal phase, and into landing, is a more apt area for needing experience. Wrecks in terminal phase are often marked by failure to reach the runway.
As to "takeoff," I'd want to address the entire departure phase for experiential basis.
AF447 happened during cruise, which is not the most common phase for mishap.