Wow! There are many well thought-out, eloquent points made on this topic by Kaptin M, Wiley and many others.
As for automation, I read that the A-320 etc required an interesting redundancy in each primary control axis, i.e. the elevators, ailerons, rudder (for some of the laymen). Anyway, an article in either "Business and Commercial Aviation" or "Professional Pilot" (US magazines) claimed that each axis had two or three different components, and each component is produced by a different software company.
Automation requires an awareness of more issues than the older technology requires, at least at specific times and in certain phases of flight. An FO on a recent trip stated that a particular very popular series of modern airliners has an FMC and other aspects of automation, which in general are worshiped by many pilots today, but which are less logical to use than is the case with a very popular competing product, and it demanded much more time to be familiar and comfortable with it. Those are his words, not mine.
If the highest levels of cockpit automation are without a doubt the best solution for flight safety's problems, then how can operational "mode confusion", partial automation, lack of adequate training aids (for years no desktop computer available, with which to prepare for any very fast-paced, fixed-base sim period at 0600-oops!) and insufficient operational line training (bean-counter limitation$ or not...) support this automation mantra which has been chanted for years? Wasn't some motivation for all this mostly to get rid of the Flight Engineer expense and allow the ultra-modern aircraft to be operated by airlines where the crewmembers had not much line experience, never mind the much better payload-range and (not always)thrust/weight ratios etc? Pardon me if this stepped on anyone's toes or pride.
