It seems to me that the posters calling for greater automation are in the main not pilots of airliners and don't quite 'get' why the airline pilots are so adamant that more automation is not the answer. Maybe an non flying analogy would help.
Lets say you owned a fleet of 18 wheeler truck and trailer units that deliver goods to super markets and the most likely time for an incident was when your drivers were backing the trailer unit into the loading docks of the supermarkets. Each incident cost you money and was a risk to personnel but 99% of the time your drivers got it right, after all they are backing up to the docks two or three times a day and have become very skilled at it over the years.
Then, an automatic parking mode becomes available on all your trucks. It is very reliable and in an effort to reduce the number of broken tail lights etc you mandate use of the system for all parking and the drivers use it often. The young drivers coming through use it exclusively. Furthermore, when training drivers, you teach and asses their skills only at using the automatic system, not at actually backing the truck into the dock.
When, as is bound to happen every so often, the automatic system is not available for some reason, how do you think the new generation of truck drivers will fare when it comes time to back the truck and trailer unit in manually? For that matter, how do you think the older drivers will go having not backed a truck for a year or so?
That is a fairly crude analogy but it roughly aligns with the problem we are discussing in my opinion. More automation is not the solution. Capable, well trained and current truck drivers is the answer.......but who pays for the training?