A recent review of pilots’ habits and abilities has claimed that today’s airline pilots are too reliant on computers.

The news comes via the US Federal Aviation Administration, which examined the events surrounding 46 accidents and data from some 9,000 flights when investigators rode in the cockpit of commercial aircraft, as well as information provided voluntarily by pilots.

Despite the report suggesting that pilots’ skills are decreased as technology becomes more advanced, most airlines and aviation regulatory bodies typically discourage and sometimes prohibit disengaging autopilot functions whist in flight.

Rory Kay, commercial flight captain and co-chairman of the US Federal Aviation Administration said that the aviation industry is beginning to see “automation addiction,” which was resulting in a new type of accident among commercial aircraft. He added that using state-of-the-art aircraft sometimes means that pilots actually forget how to use their skills.

In the report, the agency said that in 30 per cent of major aviation incidents and in 60 per cent of all recorded accidents that pilots had problems manually flying aircraft or had made poor decisions with automatic flight controls.

Among incidents outlined was a recent crash near Buffalo, New York, when a pilot had both incorrectly imputed flight plan data, which made the plane fly dangerously slow, and then responded with the incorrect direction of movement on manual flight controls.