Hi CT, yes I would agree, however I would also suggest that we are all in the business of the aviation business. We promise to get our load of warm pink bodies to destination together with any baggage or cargo they throw at us, whether it is 13 in the back of a VFR fixed rod B212 (if there are any left these days) or our 615 destined for BKK. Automation has been a response to that contract. We add automation and levels of redundancy that increases the chances of being able to fulfil the mission, I suspect that the professional SAR guys are in the same situation though within different economic context. You rightly highlight the mundane, automation has been previously described as making the boring bits more boring and the exciting bits more exciting, or more properly decreasing the workload when the workload is already low and increasing it dramatically when the workload is high. Switching from landing on runway 16 to 23 at ABZ involved a simple change of trajectory in a 332L, now I have to plan the three runway changes into PEK by setting up my secondary flight plans in the cruise. I know if I'm down in the weeds and they reassign my arrival, the two of us up front will be doing the one-armed-paperhanger impression if we have not covered our bases properly.
You also touch upon another interesting aspect, that is the diagnostics of trouble in the automation. I have plenty of personal examples where the normally very reliable automation in its rare moments, attempts to deceive me. Having an understanding of the basic parameters is essential to filter out these misleading cues. The trouble is established and rigorous procedures are essential for the safe operation of automation, the difficulty then arises as to when to drop those procedures because they either are not or will not work (in this specific, previously unimagined situation). Back to the fundamental conundrum: how to train this suspicion into the new crews.
BTW, try and get 30 crew through JFK or DME - I envy the post flight duties in the rotary world. The nice thing though is the engineers do the wash and drying runs for us - no loitering to wait for engines to cool down!