[AceyMan]

The Air France 447 accident is a better fitting example of pitfalls that may obtain in complex "humans-with-automation" types of systems.

There, automation lowered both the standard for situational awareness and fundamental stick and rudder skills. Then, when a quirky corner case happened, the pilots did all manner of wrong on the problem: so much so, they amplified a condition from "mostly harmless" to fatal for all.

Vanity Fair has a nice piece on this accident that's easy to dig up. Good read.

[emp_zealoth]

I heard it was the Airbus weirdness of steering setup that noticeably added to the problems (Separate, disjointed joysticks) One pilot pulled up as hard as he could while the other one thought he was pushing down, making the confusion this much worse

[AceyMan]

That's true, but was well known (and trained on), so I'd categorize that domain as "How the machine responds when you're hands are on the controls," which is nearly a synonym for "stick and rudder skills" category I cited.

Sure, to nearly every pilot that behavior is wacky, but it shouldn't have been a surprise for more than an instant to pilots who were "operating as designed."

It seems there's no free lunch: when skills atrophy as a natural response to helpful automation it requires advancement in some other skills, should the goal of an ever improving error (accident) rate be achieved.