Icepack, I hope I have misunderstood your post in response to another's comment about many guys not being able to interpret VORs. My understanding was that you think raw data is an obsolete and un-needed skill, now irrelevant. If that is what you meant, then please think carefully about how you'd handle an FMC failure in a non-radar IMC environment. I've had that happen a few times, including on twin-FMC aircraft; if one goes, both go, because they're operating the same software and it's invariably that which is the problem, not the hardware. Old skills are just as needed today as before because the laws of physics and aerodynamics haven't changed. We need to be able to cope with modern techniques and still be competent in the old, despite reduced opportunity to practice the old. That is what Airbus designers and airline managers spectacularly fail to understand and so it seems do many "pilots" (a term I dislike permitting modern switch monkeys).