Automation-- or holes in the Swiss Cheese of Automation
To your point, Tango, breakdown in automation seems to be a common theme in these incidents. However, it also seems to implicate how these flight crews coped with modest (or more than modest) problems with the usual automation regime. I agree that on a CAVOK day any pilot worth his salt is supposed to be able to put it on the numbers. It just seems like we may have pilots (Turkish @ AMS and AF447 being the most obvious examples) that can't handle erroneous readings from the machinery.
I no longer sit up front, so don't have to endure the check rides any longer, but it seems like we have cases (maybe because other accident causes have been so effectively been mitigated) in recent incidents where personnel aren't properly trained to cope with limited automation anomalies. The FDR and CVR made clear that the guy in the left seat on AF447 didn't correlate the repeated STALL! STALL! STALL! voice warnings with actually doing something other than continually pulling back on the joystick from FL41 to FL-Pancake.
You guys will have to endure it, as I'm out, but I'd expect some blowback from these accidents-- Basically the public and authorities will be asking why pilots forget to operate the controls correctly when all this automation takes a slight dump on them. That's what I see in "Colgan", "Poldercrash", AF447 and (perhaps presumptuously) Asiana 214.