I've been quite surprised to see a number of posts along these lines recently, basically criticising CRM for empowering whipper-snappers to challenge wise old greybeards. I thought that Tenerife (and numerous accidents before and since) had demonstrated that "years of hard earned experience" do not necessarily equate to correct judgement in any given situation, and that a far greater risk is the FO cowered into silence by the higher status of their more experienced captain? It might be irritating to have your judgement regularly queried by a relative novice, but haven't we all (in whatever field) had the experience at one time or another of being challenged and thinking "damn, the kid's right"?
Heavymetallist, I think you are conflating the issues here. I don't think we are talking about good CRM etc.
The issue is that new pilots (through no fault of their own - they have been trained that way) are good at complying with SOPS etc but lack the hands on skills which given the current level of automation can leave them lacking when things don't go according to plan.
The fact is that oldies that have done lots of flying on older generation types are "hard wired" neurologically for manual flying (they may be a bit rusty but they can
confidently hand fly). New pilots do not have those skills to fall back on.