PACE kicked the ball into play with:
But what classifies as pilot error?
To list individual accidents would not answer this question. The question requires that it be classified, that various accidents attributed to pilot error be designated under categories of a fundamental prime error.
I believe that this classification falls simply under two main headings.
Errors of commission
Errors of omission
The first is where the action was incorrect.
The second is where the action required was not carried out.
What we now find, in a world of ever increasing reliance on automation is the emergence of a new phenomenon referred to as Automation Bias. This acts to reduce cognitive effort and increase dependency on automation. The comfort and luxury offered by the state of the art aircraft slipping through the air with a crew seated in armchairs a cockpit where a pin drop would offend, watching video displays of any particular system or image they wish , creates an illusion that they are not in a perilous situation. They soon loose the reality of the fact that their armchairs are covering mother Earth at the rate of 8 nm every minute of time elapsed and the effects of a sudden reduction of this rate to a value of 0. Who and for what reason has decreed they must do their job in such an office. Surely not the pilots.
By the way have you recently seen one of these modern diggers, amazing really, it is no longer your common to all gardens, every day type of navvy who now sits on arse biting stool in a sweat box of a cab with a fag clenched between his teeth, no Siree it is a young grad with a Masters in computer sciences who is seated in luxurious comfort stroking a video screen with one of his delicate digits.