This debate has been going on for a long time now, ever since the first 767's showed up in 1983. The "old guard" would say, "That's not flying, that's pushing buttons!" and a lot of them avoided bidding the new 'electric jets'. "What are you going to do when all that magic fails??" was the most often heard reason.

The more 'stuff' that is automated, the less we think about having to do it manually. Flying is a manual, eye-hand skill, and like all of those skills, you either use it, or you will lose it. From auto brakes, to auto throttles, to auto speedbrakes, to magenta lines, we expect it will always be there for us, and have not had to use our brains for much more than 'monitoring the automation' since that's what the training guru's want us to do. Use the automation.

OK, so when do we get to practice hand flying?? Once a year in the sim?? Is that enough to stay sharp? If you fly long haul international, you know you are not as sharp as you used to be, when you flew 4 legs a day, 4 days a week, 4 weeks a month. N0 way. I'm getting about 1 landing a month, and I fly a regular line every month. Thank Dog I fly a light airplane on my off days to keep my skills up.

It has been proven that humans are not very good at monitoring automation...we get too board and then our minds start to wander...and when the fit hits the shan, we have to -wake up- and recover the jet. It's all good fun in the simulator, but try doing it late at night, over water in the weather, with warning horns blaring at you, and you've got no idea which instruments are reliable, and which ones are giving you bad info.

Maybe they are all bad. Whatcha gonna do then? At night, no horizon, in the weather.

Have you seen what it takes to recover a heavy jet from a deep stall? We've been doing it in the sim since this incident, and I'll tell you, it will get your attention, and we KNEW it was coming, still, it's hard to convince yourself you have to go 20 degrees nose down and wait...wait...wait...for the airspeed to recover and then fly out of the dive.

Now, take away the airspeed indicator...when are you going to recover the jet? I'll tell you when, too soon, and you'll be in another accelerated stall...all the way to the deck. With no horizon outside, pitch dark, weather obscuring any hope of seeing anything outside, instruments unreliable, it's no wonder these guys died.

The real question here should be, if Airbus KNEW there was a pitot icing problem, and they did, why were they still allowed to fly them, in the weather, with it not having been fixed?