The general dumbing down of things piloting is an extreme worry to most of us. If the systems design folks could guarantee that they get it all correct (which, of course, they can't .. and don't) it might be a different matter ..
You know, this is a broader cultural issue. We are seeing the exact same paradox in medicine. Everything is being reduced to autopilot with clinical pathways and guidelines. This approach inevitably de-emphasizes critical thinking, and clinical decision making skills are being lost as a result.
This approach standardizes care and produces better outcomes - most of the time. And so risk managers and administrators and legal departments love this stuff.
But (and there is always a but), if the patient gets misdiagnosed and put on the wrong pathway, or if the pathway does not address an uncommon set of circumstances particular to an individual patient, the physician is left with nothing to fall back on.
The physician blames the author of the pathway for not anticipating an unusual scenario, the managers blame the physician for not recognising s/he was out of his depth. The solution is to invariably to revise the guideline - because that is the only component of the system amenable to change.
And so it will be with AF447. Some improvements will be made to the automation. And they will be an improvement. But the underlying problem will be papered over.