In Asia, many people’s first experience of a telephone is a smartphone. Many will never know a landline. Asia’s booming airlines, likewise, have mostly got their start since flying stopped being about aerodynamics and became about monitoring computer systems. Asia’s pilots come up in classrooms and simulators, not hand-flying Piper Cubs or rudimentary military trainers.

Nobody yet knows what caused the Dec. 28 AirAsia crash off the coast of Borneo, but the airplane appears to have gotten badly out of shape while the crew was...