Clearly i sit further back than you guys but if I might make an observation.
Modern automation has no doubt made flying 'easier' and less prone to individual pilot skill levels. Obverlla thats probably a good thing and has no doubt, through things like alpha protection, CATIII autoland prevented a significant number of accidents.
All this can easily be deduced by looking at overall accident statistics and how they have drastically reduced. Add savings on pilot training and recurrency training and theyare attractive prospects for corporate managements.
However we seem in the last year of two to have got to a point where the automatics safety factor is virtually taken for granted-it is not the improvement factor any more it is the new norm. As a consequence little publicity internally or externally appears to be given to situations where autoflight or simialr 'saves the day.
On the contrary side however among the much reducded number of accidents is a much increased number of accidents rseulting from situations that years ago just would never have happened, like stalling the plane which lets face it is pilotign 101.. The skills and airmanship with junior pilots learning on the job doing things like running round the Bovingdon hold for LHR in bad weather after an overnight from USA in a Conway engined 707 ,for instance meant that new FOs really did learn the hard way as part of the job because their was no alternative , no magenta line and this stuff happened on a daily basis
Move along to 2016 and no one has the opportunity to learn the 'hard way' because no one operates heavy underpowered jets with raw data on round guages . So when something unusual crops up those once vital skills in daily use are no longer there and we get events like the Colgan crash in Buffalo, Asiana at SFO and AF 447 .
The problem the pilot community have is balancing the two scenarios , do automatics save more lives than they cost as a result of degraded skills- and therefore save more money. You all know which choice your airline will make if the answer is yes. So how do you make a case for more manual flying in order to gain and keep current skills that may never be used or may one dark dirty night save a couple of hundred lives and a couple of hundred million dollars.
It would seem to me that someone (BALPA?IFALPA) needs to put together a proper analysis of recent accidents and make the case that in todays world the majority of accidents are caused no so much by pilot error as inadequate piloting and if that can clearly be shown then airlines and regulators do face a compulsion to do something since lawyers, media and insurers do not look kindly on people who overlook evident risks.
Anyway excuse me butting in, I have every sympathy with you as it is not just in the pilot world where this sort of thing happens, the number of times experience and judgement have been overturned by a spreadsheet or power point is beyond count in my (telecommunications) world but when something goes wrong in the middle of the night and they have to dig out aged Fred the engineer or young Jack the nerdy one who understands it all, these guys do have the luxury or time and safe environments to figure out the fix and maybe experiment a bit-you guys don't and people die as a result