I would like to recall a term that I miss in the conversation:
Automation induced pilot error.
There will always be human errors, but there will always be electronic failures.
There is a very well established statistic about pilot error in airline crashes, not surprisingly a high one and, even less surprisingly a very meagre statistic about automation failure. In most cases there is mention about some electronic failure, however there is always the mention about the failure of the crew to either prevent it or correct it, thus blaming the pilot and statistically put it down to pilot error.
Take away some automation and I admit we will have some accidents happen that could have been prevented through protections. However we might have some other accidents not happen because the pilots would not have been misled by badly designed or failed automation. Furthermore the training would have not been outsourced to poorly programmed online courses and reduced to the bare minimum and such trained professionals might have avoided some more accidents.
Automation is great, if you have it as nice to have and use when appropriate. Today though, due to poor pilots skills and even poorer manger skills, it has become need to use. I pretend that this philosophy is slightly flawed and sort of originating a lot of accidents.
How convenient for airlines, manufacturers and regulators though: It leaves them with the omnipresent pilot error.
D'you wann bet neither AF nor AB will be indicated in any way for AF447?
It will remain the way it is: Everybody hitting on the admittedly below adequate standard pilots!
