Where does that familiarity, that expertise, that practice come from?
TRAINING. And as much of it as you can get.
I agree, but not training on its own. As mentioned selection of correct personnel is critical and their attitude to their work and profession. I note that most posters on here are the wrong side of 40, we need to be clearer on expectation on the young people who enter our industry.
For you guys and us, a lot of our job is routine, but we have to ensure we are trained and prepared to take the correct actions in the event of an emergency. It is very easy to let this slip.
Correct me if wrong, but you guys are trained how to auto rotate and land on engine failure and have to demonstrate this hands on?
The chance of having to use this in anger seems to me much less than having to get an aircraft out of danger when it finds itself descending quickly at low speed for whatever reason with possible CFIT consequence. Should you not have to be trained and exercised on how to do this with AP and manually?
Also agree on need to be able to recognise quickly when the a/c is starting to get into this situation.
I admire DB's and others passion for safety and automation, but as we all know automation can go wrong - although on modern systems reliability is high. Then you have to be able to use manual skills?
Edited to add this quote from Neil Armstrong which applies to all of us.
You've got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected