Bubbers, to a certain extent the FAA is forcing us to do that. We've basically being told we have to design for the 3 sigma 'bad' pilot - to take credit for what 99% of pilots would do is considered depending on "usual pilot skill"
The rational is that "inappropriate crew action" in response to something else going wrong is a leading cause of crashes. Therefore we need to design to prevent "inappropriate crew action", which sounds reasonable on the surface. But the way it's been implemented, if any dumbass pilot has ever made a mistake, we need to assume that every pilot is a dumbass and will make the same mistake
I'm willing to bet significant money that the Asiana 777 crash at SFO will drive new regulations (or a 'reinterpretation' of an existing regulation) to require automatic protection of airspeed during critical flight phases (never mind that autothrottle/autothrust already do that if the dumbass bothers to turn it on).
Get used to it, it's not going to get any better
. It's also why I think the pilotless (passenger carrying) airplane will eventually happen. When the primary purpose of the airplane avionics becomes preventing the pilot from doing something stupid, it's really not that big of leap to take the pilot out of the equation entirely
