A discussion point: There has been much opinion-ating here, me as well, on basic handling skills being lost. I suspect it's come mostly from old farts. I flew much GA and then started in the glamour life on B732. In those days the infrastructure was very primitive, relatively, even in some european areas, and definitely in Africa. The a/c were primitive, relatively. Thus the pilots had to be much sharper about everything in their environment, AND they had to be able to fly the a/c to a high standard. If you couldn't then there were some airports that were just damn dangerous. They were bad enough anyway, but if you couldn't handle the a/c you were in dire straits. You couldn't write extensive trained monkey SOP's for these places. You trained to a high standard of manual flying and operational skills, trusted your crews, especially the captains, and relied upon them to make airmanship judgements. When that didn't happen you ended up on Air Crash investigation.
Going into the major, relatively, airports you could be more relaxed as radar led you by the nose, or let you go visual onto a nice big runway with all the bells and whistles and much flat ground around. BUT, the basics of monitoring what was happening never stopped. It was natural. You didn't switch ON in the greek islands and OFF in London. You were ON all the time because that was your attitude. The a/c were basic and sometimes broke.
Nowadays, with better reliability, multiple backups, FBW a/c full of automatic this and that, and a training belief that the a/c automatics are the best way to fly, they are infallible, will not let you go outside the envelope, is it any wonder that pilots sit there expecting it all to happen for them. If it goes wrong the a/c will either tell them with messages, wailers, bells etc. or it will take over and protect itself.
Even back in B757 days I had instructors from the old B732/727's howling at students to "fly the FD." They didn't emphasise that you also needed to maintain a good instrument scan to ensure the FD was being your friend; NO, it was, "it is always correct so follow it". You can stall with a beautifully centred FD, or equally fly into the ground. This attitude followed on when the autopilot was in charge; punch the MCP and watch the FMA and then relax.
I wonder: has the technological advance run away so much that the a complacency has seeped into the profession? What is sure is that the training philosophies have not kept pace in parallel with technology; nor the checking methods & standards. There is also something in the financial management attitudes. Why are we paying all these people so much money to sit there & push buttons exactly as our SOP tells them to do, monkey fashion, and nothing ever goes wrong. It's child's play. With these opinions at the top is it no wonder standards have slipped. Perhaps it is not perceived necessary any longer to have high standards, only adequate standards. The technology will take care of the odd deficiency. Punch the buttons, navigate onto the ILS and let it do its thing. No crashes = the highest standards. Hm?
Some chickens are coming home to the roost.
But back to the question: has the advent and rapid spread of FBW a/c and almost fail-safe automatics led to the dilution in handling skills and the rather casual attitude found in some flight decks? Especially considering that many pilots no start on this generation of a/c.