At the risk of starting an age-war, I'd say that I see a totally different attitude from some of the old-timers as far as risk management is concerned. As someone in the safety-field, I feel that "risk assessments" are just meaningless pieces of paper that make safety-professionals feel good about themselves and sleep well at night. On the other hand, I think that the FAA is trying to figure out how to handle this problem, and I've noticed certain things from older pilots (not talking geriatric, just one or two generations older) that blow my mind. It seems like younger pilots do not get exposed to some of the risky situations that these older pilots got away with, and maybe some of them are better for it (the ones that survived), but the cost is too much, loosing pilots along the way. Maybe I'm way off base and it's not an issue. In any case, I think risk assessments, IMSAFE checklists, decision making processes, and the lot are fairly useless, as they are trying to change attitudes and that is a very hard thing to do. The pilots who have a good attitude and do not take excessive risks do not need those "tools" and the ones that do are the ones that will disregard the "tools" anyway.

As far as "back to basic airmanship"...yeah, most people do not want to take the time to learn. I'd say a good deal of airline pilots don't have a solid grasp on landing, not that they can't in most situations, just that they don't really know what's going on, and then there's that one landing where things go bad and they don't know why...