P&A I think the term you are looking for, which was mentioned several times at the conference JimL mentioned, is "Resilience". ie crews need to have some depth of ability so that when things go pear shaped, they can fall back on their underlying knowledge and skill and judgment to recover the situation, rather than flailing around helplessly when "the tramlines" are departed from. It is a great and meritorious buzzword, although I am less certain how we train resilience into crews in the real world.
Regarding this incident, I think we need type rated experience to comment (so that rules me out) from the likes of 212man. But with my EC225 experience I find it unfortunate that no mention is made of the trim release buttons. The EC225 is quite happy when you "fly through" go-around mode or the like, but only if you press the trim releases before expecting the AFCS to resume control. Personally I always fly through with the trim releases pressed, in the case of the EC225 it is much more stable and easier to fly, but nevertheless the majority of my erstwhile colleagues would insist on flying against the spring trims. It was one trait I failed to eradicate before I fell off my perch.
Clearly these guys didn't really understand the implications of flying through on one axis but not the other (ie on the cyclic, whilst allowing the collective to be reduced by the autopilot. Inadequate training and lack of OMB information on standard departure procedures probably lies at the heart of that.
Again, relating to the EC225 and therefore risking being wrong about the EC155, I think it is a great shame that what came out of the incident was a ruling that GA mode shall not be used on departure. That is just saying "we don't really understand how this bit works, we are not competent to use is, therefore we won't use it". Presumably the next step, following a future flight path deviation, will be to disallow use of the autopilot altogether and make the pilots fly with no stability at all, just in case it does something they don't understand?!! Barking!
The GA mode, properly used (EC225 again) is a great safety asset during a difficult departure and it is a retrograde step to disallow its use (as always, unless the EC155 has a particular issue that I don't know about)
Oh and that old chestnut about "manual flying skills" crops up again. One thing I learnt from the conference was that "situational awareness" has many levels. The situation regarding where one is around an IF approach, other traffic, terrain etc. is the top level. But at the opposite end of the scale, the situational awareness of what the current airspeed, flight attitude and altitude etc are. And there are numerous layers in between.
So it is with manual flying skills. "Lets make them fly more manual ILSs" for example, means that the pilots are quite good at flying an immaculate manual ILS. To do that typically means that you get yourself in trim and in general the smaller control inputs you make, the better. So you fly a really smooth ILS with hardly any attitude or power changes, and those you do make are very slow and gentle. But does that really help at all with the incident scenario? I would say not in the slightest.
So let's make them fly manually on departure for longer, until the AFCS upper modes are engaged. Again, the flight path should be well controlled and this is generally achieved by small slow and gentle control inputs with correspondingly well controlled attitude and other flight parameters. Does that help with recovering from the incident scenario? I would say not in the slightest.
What is needed in these cases is the confidence to make significant control inputs to stabilise a situation that is getting out of control. These days, with the passengers breathing down our necks and reporting every bump and bank to their safety reps, ATC reporting any slight deviation from the expected flight path, pilots are herded into a very tight flight profile that is always the same, scared of a ticking off (at a subconscious level) if they have to make sudden control movements and lacking in confidence to handle anything out of the ordinary.
Although the report is not yet out, I wonder if this was the reason why the Sumburgh L2 pilot took 8 seconds to increase the collective from lowish power to takeoff power whilst his helicopter was falling into the sea. The engines spool up in about 2 seconds and had he raised the collective at that speed when he first became aware of the need to increase power, I suspect disaster could have been avoided.
How is such ability and confidence gained? When I was a baby co-pilot I went to Miri (Sarawak, Borneo) on the SA330 and we had an empty sector morning and evening positioning to and from the international airport to the passenger airfield which allowed lots of AP out flying, steep turns, torque turns and other wild flying which these days would be absolutely not allowed. But my flying abilities took a massive turn for the better.
So I would say the current obsession with doing everything on rails and not upsetting the passengers is the reason why pilots these days can sometimes lack the skills - or RESILIENCE - to get themselves out of the poo. Writing a comment about the need for "better manual flying skills" will never be the answer. The culture has to change from a short sighted one of "passenger comfort and perceived safety first" to the big picture of "you have to crack an egg to make an omelette" because for sure, the former strategy isn't working.