Automation dependency stripped of political correctness.

[1201alarm]

At the end what we are talking here is a twofold thing: knowledge and skill.

You need to have some knowledge: how a wing flies, what AOA is, what stall means, how you have to react to stall, what the backside of the power curve is, what happens in high level aerodynamic (coffin corner), what it means to fly on mach, the concept of energy in terms of alt, speed, weight and wind vs. distance to go, pitch and power values for the usual flight regimes incl. go around and single engine go around, function of slats and flaps, effect of underslung engines, danger of WS and TS...

That is what comes to my mind when I don't think about it more deeper. I am sure others will come up with some more points.

It is really not that much, and all these things can be learned and understood under own efforts, independantly what your airline does. The examples (accidents) are easy to find to learn and understand these basics. No excuses possible!

So lets move to skills: once you have understood above basics, how do you make it work in real live, in the sense that a skill is a knowledge that is applied correctly and made to use in reality?

The most important skill is scanning. Scanning of your instruments, your basic T plus the engine instruments. Your eyes need to be fix in wandering around, scan, scan, scan... The best way to train this is by flying manually, ALWAYS with ATHR off when the AP is off (remember, speed MUST be in your scan), and you want to be proficient in pitch and power. Regularly you should even switch of the FD. Hand-eye-coordination will become much better.

Here the airlines come into play, some have a good culture in switching AP/FD/ATHR off, some not. A good culture encourages switching AP/FD/ATHR off, and has a basic understanding among pilots and some rules when it is appropriate to do so and when not.

Once you have been accustomed to it, it is really no big deal anymore. Your scanning capacity becomes so good, that is becomes a peace of cake to supervise your autopilot.

[I can understand that on longhaul, it is a bit more difficult.]

Then no one is stopping you from ignoring FMS managed descent calculations (if not required by airspace, route, ATC) and being skilled in judgement of wind, weight, speed, alt vs. distance to go. Just refine every day out there the point you start your idle descent towards the field.

At least the message is getting out there, leaders in safety and training have since quite a while been past the point where automation was seen as the be end of all.

However, individual airlines still are lagging behind, but at least most of the big carriers seem to have understood.

It is not rocket science, it does hardly cost money, it just has to be done.