Are these incidents not caused partly by the diminution of basic handling skills due to the increased automation and an up and coming generation of pilots who have little or no experience of hand flying jet aircraft?
When I look back to flying the B737-200 in the 1980s or the B707 in the 1970s I recall that it was quite commonplace for approaches from FL 100 or even (shock horror) from top of descent to be hand flown. We would think nothing of hand flying a visual approach or even a circle to land. We did so much of this that we were "hard-wired" for manual flying - consequently flying the correct airspeed (and the PNF shouting "Airspeed" when the trend or instant value wasn't going the right way) was a given.
I am not against use of automation but I believe this is where the root cause of the problem is. I don't blame the individuals - it is the system (or lack of it) that has produced this result. If we want pilots to be competent they have to be in practice at hand flying but given the dumbing down of basic skills the software/techie guys will seek all sorts of solution with extra warning systems I suppose.
Last edited by fireflybob; 12th Sep 2012 at 19:47.