Watching this it sounded familiar to what many of us have been discussing about the demise of the modern commercial MPA piloting skills. The Powers That Be have allowed automatics to replace basic skills; not enough education about the automatic systems, and not enough skill to take over when necessary
On this subject, the British aviation journalist, David Learmount, wrote the following on 4 August 2011 under the title of "AF557 and the loss of control epidemic." Edited for brevity.
"Contrary to a lot of comment you will hear, this is not a function of the atrophying of manual motor skills, it is brain skills and awareness that has been lost. I would qualify that statement about loss of manual skills by saying that flying on instruments is a skill that needs frequent practice, because it requires sophisticated cognitive skills. But even in instrument flying, it is not the loss of motor skills that's the killer, it's the loss of that ability to recognise, believe, and understand what the instruments are telling you.
But the loss of these skills is being covered up by the cleverness and reliability of flight management systems and the autopilot/autothrottle systems they direct. Even the pilots don't know whether they've lost these skills or not. They don't find out until the automatics fail. And with the stress of a systems failure reducing your brain's capacity to take good decisions, that's a bad time to find out you no longer have the skills to cope.
Just a simple analogy for you about loss of skills: I recently discovered I had forgotten how to do long division. I don't need the skill any more because my calculator has rendered it redundant. But my life and the lives of those around me do not depend on these atrophied skills of mine.
Whereas a pilot's cognition of what's going on, gleaned from raw data sources when that's all there is left, is essential for survival. The training regime pilots are required to undergo is the underlying cause of Air France 447. The training regime is not set by the airlines, it is set by the world's civil aviation authorities. They have failed to update pilot training requirements to take account of the massive changes in the nature of an airline pilot's job with the arrival of modern, highly automated aircraft.
So it's the world's civil aviation authorities who, above others, shoulder the responsibility for Air France 447, and for the six other loss-of-control flights since 2000. Let me list them. And remember these have been the cause of 976 unnecessary deaths:
2010 Ethopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 in the Mediterranean Sea near Beirut.
2009 Yemenia Airbus A310-300, in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros Islands.
2009 Air France A330-300, South Atlantic
2007 Adam Air Boeing 737-400, Java sea near Sulawesi
2006 Armavia Airbus A320, Black Sea near Sochi
2004 Flash Airlines 737-300, Red Sea near Sharm el-Sheikh
2000 Gulf Air A320-200, Arabian Gulf near Bahrain
This has to stop, and a modernised system of training for pilots that recognises how automation is causing essential skills to atrophy, is the only way of doing it.