I do agree that glass cockpits, along with the automation allows the pilot to perform additional tasks while the workload is high, and increases situational awareness to a certainty.

I feel the "big gotcha" is not getting to reliant or lazy, since your scan is confined to a such smaller area, and easier. Don't get me wrong, I would love to fly an entirely glass cockpit and nice automation again, but I know what happens after you fly glass for a while.

I didn't build up a solid building block of steam gauge flying before I went to the airlines right out of school, 2007. When I started flying the 145, I transitioned to Glass pretty quickly, and thought I was pretty good at it, and was really comfortable when I got used to the aircraft.

After getting furloughed, I went to 135 cargo where you would almost poop your pants if you had a Garmin 430 in it. I quickly realized that I didn't know jack about actual flying and that my scan was atrocious. After 3 years flying night freight, I can safely say that flying steam gauges has dramatically solidified my sick and rudder skills, scan, and overall situational awareness in the cockpit.

I think it would benefit the new pilots to still learn in all steam gauges today, then transition to glass once they have their instrument or even multi-engine rating. The reason is if you want to work your way up by building hours, you will have to fly freight, flight instruct, or many other options. The only problem is that a lot of those jobs still have planes older then me, and entirely steam gauge.

But, the folks these days have to try and sell new airplanes, and loading the cockpit up with the latest bells and whistles puts the perspective of the buyer in a certain mind frame, buy the aircraft.

Just my two cents.