But the report went on to say that there were at least 12 other instances where pilots encountered this issue and the flights continued normally without problems. Voss said the Air France pilots didn't seem prepared for the situation they found themselves in the night of the crash.

"[The pilots] seemed to have trouble looking past the automation they were accustomed to and not really able to continue with the old raw information that pilots used to depend on," he said. "Clearly the report shows that there was a lot of difficult communication on the flight deck, a lot of incomplete thoughts, a lot of confusion."

and

But in modern aviation, large commercial jets almost fly themselves. Voss said that on any given flight, pilots are manually flying the plane for only three minutes -- one minute and 30 seconds each for take-off and landing.

"The fact is there aren't many opportunities for a pilot to hand fly the aircraft anymore," he said. "The truth is it's only a few minutes during each flight, maybe until they climb up to altitude. Many airplanes don't even allow the hand flying for that long."

At the heart of the heated debate over so-called "automation addiction," which is when pilots are overly dependent on computers to fly their planes, is the question of whether pilots are actually learning how to properly fly large commercial aircraft.

"Because of this sophistication and the ability of airplane to fly themselves, they don't have as many people to actually fly the airplane, to actually exercise their stick and rudder capabilities," Bill Bozin, the vice president of safety and technical affairs at Airbus, told "Nightline" in June.

In the wake of the Air France crash, Voss said "many airlines" were retraining their pilots on flying manually, but that much more needs to be done to overhaul pilot training programs around the world.