Also, these skills may not be so well practiced, and also in this sense it’s mainly a cognitive skill – knowing what to do vs how to do it; this depends on understanding the situation.
Agree. What you say is basically what I was saying in #176:
That is very well put! It needs both, but while the manual flying skills do not need to be perfect (just don't leave your flight envelope, and if you approach the edges of the envelope, stear it back into the middle of the envelope), sound judgement and decision making with good situational awareness is overall the most important.
If we think about AF447 or the Air Asia thing, it was a problem of basic flying, but not in the sense of how precisely can I fly it, but in the sense, how should my plane be flown ROUGHLY right now. You could even argue it was not about what to do, but about what surely NOT to do (pull on the stick).
It is not about perfect manual flying, but about not messing it up. To not mess it up, you need to understand in what situation you are in.
but these aspects may be easier to understand and implement if ‘technology’ (an enabler) is considered separately from ‘automation’ (actor).
Again I agree. It is actually a good concept to distinguish between automated systems that inform or warn you and automated systems that act.
When I said...
RAAS / ROPS comes to mind. Better TO Config warnings, which include position of the aircraft. Or the whole concept of approaches with vertical guidance.
But all these technologies should and will be support for pilots, who remain in charge, have the final authority over the action, and deal with daily problems and malfunctions as they arise.
... I meant exactly that: additional systems which help to avoid deadly mistakes while keeping the crew in charge.