Flying commercial airplanes to me, a non- pilot, seems to be the easiest kind of flying. I cannot understand why you need complicated computer systems.
The plane takes off and lands on , to me, an overly long, wide, well maintained runway. Some of these runways are 10-12,000 feet long.
The take offs and landings are very conservative so as not to alarm the passengers.
The plane in fligth makes very few if any sharp turns or dives or ascents when in flight.
When it lands it takes a long approach and the pilots get assistance from the tower telling them what runaway to land on , and what the weather is and whether to land or not.
Why this type of flying would need complicated computer systems is beyond me.
This not flying a fighter jet type of flying.
Or the other extreme ,flying a Pitt Special doing incredible aerial stunts. - Tom
Once watched a (Saudi, I believe) 747 line up to land on a runway of the decommissioned Floyd Bennett NAS instead of a runway at JFK. The FBNAS runway was at about a 90 degree angle to the JFK runway and about 5 statute miles closer. A rather rapid port-starboard zig-zag got him back on the proper approach. I'm sure the radio traffic from the tower would have been quite interesting.
You make some good points, especially about the long runways. When a pilot is used to landing and taking off at short fields with obstructions to clear on one or both ends, it feels like you are in slow motion when you come into some place with a long and wife runway.
That said... my brother has been an airline captain for decades as are many of my neighbors and airliners are incredibly complicated beasts as compared to small general aviation aircraft. Just a look at the control panel should convince most people. A competent pilot should know what every knob, guage, switch, fuse, and control does and how to use it. The landing, takeoff and cruising speeds are much higher, and those thick manuals are filled with procedures and numbers that competent pilots should know by heart.
But there does seem to be a problem when the basics of flight are so insulated from the pilots that they no longer feel comfortable flying a normal small plame.
One of our neighbors is a 28 year old woman who we have known since she was 6. She, both her parents and her brother are airline pilots. She bought her own T-6, a plane which was originally designed in the 1930s. Her dad told me just her last annual cost her $30,000. It has a big old 600hp radial engine on the front and she flies it in and out of our short field with obstructions on both ends, not to mention sometimes severe turbulence from the surrounding hills. She spent this last weekend in Sweet Water, Texas giving surviving WASP women from WWII rides in the trainers they learned in and flying a P51 Mustang. That young lady is a competent and skilled pilot. I would be very pleased to see her at the controls of any airliner I was a passenger in.