We have to remember that we are working in a commercial environment so ideally to the airline, there would be no pilots.
I finished training only 6 years ago and even I feel the aircraft I flew were out of date. Talking to the cadets now, they were telling me how they have autopilot and glass cockpits in their Diamonds. The only screen I had was a GPS and we weren't allowed to use it.
Now back to the original post which is about TransAsia and the trend towards the cause of many accidents due to low hours.
Let's think about this. How many hours did the guys have with the;
1. Asiana SFO accident?
2. AF 447
3. Air Asia 8501
I honestly feel it's the over reliance on automatics that's the culprit and pilots are merely managers nowadays. Surely the pilot of the TransAsia accident can remember the good old phrase "Dead leg Dead engine" but let's not forget, how we react in an actual emergency can be vastly different to how we think we would react.