Lockstock, That crash was mentioned by Trimstab to refute the OP's contention that this is a military vs civil issue. You claim to agree with him on that point (as I do). In fact the Cali accident had nothing whatever to do with automation or flight mode confusion. There are lots of others, military and civil, which any of us could have cited. The fact you picked that one suggests you either don't know much about the issue, or were just grabbing at any incident involving fault by a civilian flight crew, in your words, "to score points".
Some have tended to merge the issues of "what's it doing now" mode confusion with that of hand flying skills. In my opinion these are two separate issues; I've flown with pilots with excellent hands who are not good at reading the FMA and (less often), vice versa.
Last edited by ShotOne; 27th Apr 2015 at 19:38.