This is a very strange perspective to me. Clearly making flying boring has tremendously reduced the number of incidents. Certainly it's true that making something boring will increase the incident rate...but what's overwhelmingly clear from the data is that the reduction in incidents from all that automation dwarfs that effect.
Yes, we want flying to be as boring as possible, and yes making flying this boring has been the result of the amazing success of making flying safe.
Yes, with flying so boring, when something exciting does happen it's in many senses more of a problem.
This is a, maybe the fundamental dilemma in aviation safety today. Part of the solution is lots and lots of simulator training. Which of course is a problem when the manufacturer claims that there is no need for simulator training, because everything is exactly the same.
Boring for the passenger doesn’t mean boring for the pilot. A bus driver has to drive the bus, it’s routine yet never the same thing, their day goes by pretty fast. Compare to someone watching over an automated train...it’s just time they spend twiddling their thumbs, time crawls, they get really bored.
Flying is becoming less like flying a bus and more like supervising an automated train, and that is what is dangerous. When something unusual happens, the pilots are surprised and unable to adjust quickly, because unusual isn’t usual.
Of course, if unusual happens all the time, or is too out of the norm, you are pretty screwed, exciting is more dangerous than boring, but it doesn’t make boring less dangerous.
Pilots still have a lot to do, they must monitor the radios, the weather, fuel, etc. Since plenty of accidents have been caused by not paying attention to these things, I don't think you can say that having more time to do them is a bad thing.
If there is a lack of manual flying ability it is entirely
due to culture and not the aircraft. Pilots can and do turn off the autopilot if they want to practice, and most landings are done manually because it is softer.
