"The current system is built around avoiding nasty problems around the edges of the flight envelope and training people not to go there."
Even that gives the current strategy too much credit. It is in fact just about reducing costs and making money. For money-men pilots are an inconvenience to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
Pilots used to be almost worshipped ! The captain of the skies. It was an honour to meet one or visit the cockpit and see those stripes on the shoulder.
Travelling to Asia used to be a once in a lifetime thing, a strange world with strange food and exotic culture. Now busloads go and sit in concrete boxes and etc...
For those in the industry, like in all industries in this age, one must be quite sly to get the best out of it. You must know the money-agenda of the corporations ... no matter what their
PR people say in public.
They demand that you robotise your flying behaviour to keep your job ... and yet you may meet a situation where only your skill wits and knowledge is going to save your backside.
If I was a pilot I would certainly be plugging into the simulator all the serious air incidents that affect the models I fly, and going over them until I know exactly what to do to get the best outcome. Without necessarily telling the company what I am doing.
It is interesting if these pilots tried to switch off the computers. It may indicate that they were trying to avert AF447 but hadn't studied the case well enough.
It's one thing talking about life-saving manoeuvres on the internet, but unless you have disciplined yourself to practice them over and over and over again until you are certain, absolutely certain what and why and how ... if you haven't, then if the time comes you will either sit like a rabbit in headlights ... or make a mess of it.