Sadly it is all down to money, and ever lower ticket prices. WTF? Of course we should be taught to fly every aircraft manually and with raw data first, followed by a gradual feeding in of the automatics, but that would use up too much of the profits. And it's not the workers who are benefiting from this money saving. It is the owners or the shareholders who are fast asleep in bed, raking in the profits while you and I are mincing around doing our 4th sector in the middle of the night in bad weather, carrying MEL issues and delays. (Or flying to countries with Ebola). CAA/ICAO should be more pro-active in checking airlines for responsible engineering support, responsible training, responsible crew compliment, sensible SOP's, etc.
Meanwhile, the management think it's all fine because Johnny Newboy with their MPL can fly perfectly well using the automatics and the SOP's.
(I am not having a go at 'Johnny Newboy'. It's not their fault either).
And to prove my point, this just posted on the Thomas Cook thread on this forum by Uplinker.
It is all linked, sadly
