>Is the public broadly aware of that?
I don’t see why not. I didn’t go to pilot school or have any plane related interests, but from movies and tv shows and the fact that there are 2 or more pilots on every plane, it would be prudent to assume there are limitations.
The colloquialism of a person being on autopilot and making mistakes seems apt here, too. You use the Autopilot function in the car, and you don’t pay attention, then you will get in trouble.
Is the public broadly aware of that?
There's a colloquial phrase in American English, "to be on autopilot", meaning when a person acts without awareness of what they're doing, often used when somebody makes a stupid mistake during a lapse of attention.