rmac,
What continually surprises me is that people constantly draw a distinction between those (like me) who were 'military' trained and those who came through the airline system. Personally, after coming to the aluminium tube world, I have been consistently pleased to see that the level of professionalism and diligence in my peer group is either at the same level or (in most cases
) exceeds my own.
I will admit, in a large body of pilots, there will be the 'lazy' ones.
I have flown all manner of flying machines and they all have a stupendous perpencity to 'go wrong'. The skill of us, in the front, is the ability to do our job, as trained, to the best of our ability and ensure that the first the paying public hear of it iis either safely on the ground or when I tell them that we have to, regrettably, divert. Perhaps we are the victims of our own success when these things get leaked to the press and then we, as a professional body, remember that what for us is routine is, for the layman, pretty serious.
Various scenarios played out in the press over the past years have caught the publics attention. I would suggest that some of these have been down to poor training of FO's and poor supervisory diligence of Captains. As the Captain it is your responsibility to both ensure the FO is capable and competent for the sector and that you enhance, guide and nurture the FO's path toward command.
Perhaps we are guilty of lazyness in both seats from that perspective but I would like to add that given the masses of flights per day that the occurance of such disasters is extremely small.