Competent, well trained pilots, that’s what could have saved both airplanes.
Undoubtedly true. But Langewiesche's son wrote an article, maybe a year ago, that vividly pointed out that most of the rest of the world does not now, and perhaps never will, have competent, well-trained pilots. According to him, Airbus figured this out first, and started designing planes that could be flown by...well...by people like me, while Boeing built good planes for good pilots.
Could be that useless pilots are going to be a fact of life for much of the world, and airliners have to be designed to deal with that.
- oldman