Personally I see it in a different way. What active pilots do need, be them airline, corporate or whatever is constant and recurrent training. The minimum training and checking requirements laid down by the major authorities worldwide can be insufficient to effectively warrant complete proefficiency to those pilots who do not push themselves to dig in more for extra knowledge and practice. A big chunk of the pilot population gets in the book a few days before their recurrent PPC and most of the time already with a good idea of what is going to happen inside the box. Why does that happen ? I believe one of the main reasons is that flying pilots up to their maximum limits obviously requires subsequent rest and time for family/social activities, with less and less time that can be dedicated to self study and preparation. If Authorities / Operators increased the amount of rostered mandatory ground recurrent training and sim training and checking then it could be a big step forward. You can pick up a guy with as many hours as You want of GA to fly on the line, but if subsequently he/she doesn't keep up on track with the constant need of self updating then it will be completely useless. Now having guys on the ground studying and in the sim is expensive for airlines, who need them to fly passengers and not in front of their Ipad to periodically review the several thousand pages of different company manuals and procedures. The question is : how many of those accidents would have happened with better trained and aware pilots ? Nowadays a type rating can take 3 weeks, when I started flying it took 3 months and we had a ground instructor for every system of the aircraft. I believe there should be a way somewhere in between.
My 2 pennies

Sonicbum - My only quibble with your argument is that simulators rarely faithfully reproduce the seat of the pants sensations necessary to properly fly an aircraft and so obviously lacking in some recent accidents.

Agree whole-heartedly. Not that I fly as a passenger anymore. But when I did, I was always a trifle uneasy sitting down the back knowing on a long flight the captain was asleep in his rest bunk and a sprog second officer was in the left seat and a first officer in the right seat. In the case of the Air France A330 accident it became the second officer's "leg" and the first officer merely watched as the second officer stuffed up in weather.

You are absolutely right. The seat of the pants sensation is almost completely absent in the sim and that is an important limit of these training devices that we should account for. The "box ticking" philosophy is one of the major concerns affecting the industry as, especially nowadays, everything must be fast and cost efficient otherwise the bean counters will see it as unproductive. Me, like I believe the majority of other trainers regardless of the type of airline, have found myself with 4 hours sim sessions filled up way above the brim with enough material to cover comfortably 2 sessions. You then end up with maybe 1 or 2 trainers signing training disruptions for lack of time whilst the majority just cuts every possible corner to finish the session, go home and chill. No need to say who then gets questioned by the training department. I honestly don't know where we are going to end up by following those principles and I praise those operators who still manage to keep the bar high regardless of how expensive it is.

A good example is competency in max crosswind landings during both type rating and re-currency simulator training sessions. Many low experience pilots fear crosswind landings; yet their boxes are ticked off after two or three landing attempts if they are lucky and it's on to the next sequence in the syllabus.

They lose confidence quickly especially as we all know it takes real pure flying skill to be able to consistently nail a good crosswind landing without screaming tyres and being jerked sideways. It takes at least ten landings on maximum crosswinds in the simulator before some new pilots get the hang of the de-crabbing technique. These can be done from one mile final or five mile final using re-positioning after touch down. Yet few syllabus will allow the half-an-hour of time needed for practice until certified competent.

That is very true. Unfortunately nowadays how many airlines offer the opportunity to have purely non jeopardy handling sim sessions aside from the mandatory recurrent/ppc ? I believe we can count them on one hand.