HC - I can't give you the training system you need because you won't pay for it - the argument about going bust is the malaise of the helicopter industry from what I read on this forum - someone will always do the job cheaper and it will always be about short-term gain rather than long-term planning.
As long as the industry accepts this status quo, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about training falling short of needs will never change anything.
It seems the industry can't pull together to raise standards (because they are statistically pretty safe and the bean counters won't pay the extra) and the regulators are reactive rather than proactive.
The reality is that we will continue to accept crashes like Norfolk and Sumburgh as an acceptable attrition rate for the money that customers are prepared to pay. You only get as much Flight Safety as you are prepared to pay for.
This thread started as a discussion about mismanagement of automation - the answer is clearly - more training ; the question is 'who will pay for it'? Until you solve that dichotomy then things will continue to steadily decline.
I agree that the luxury of the mil system being allowed to throw more hours at any similar problem - although not as easy to do nowadays (even the mil has budgetary constraints) - isn't likely to happen in the civil market but there doesn't seem any push to even try.
One thing that might help is if pilots designed AP systems rather than engineers, then we might have less complicated failure modes, degraded modes, diagnosis of system failures and an industry standard for naming things.
Big buttons and bright lights works for me
My nephew has just finished his MCC with a well-known budget airline and the AP system on a modern airbus has so many warnings, both visual and aural, even of minor system malfunctions, that it is easy to miss something important when wading through the niff naff.