I could see the Airbus lobby pushing heavily for something like this :)

That would not be practical or necessary. What is necessary (and is being worked on after AF447) is giving pilots more hands-on flying experience. This is a concern not only for Airbus pilots, but for Boeing pilots as well.

As an aside to my question above.

Do pilots transitioning from the Airbus to the Boeing get put through an intensive simulator training to '(re)acclimatise' them to the Boeing.

By intensive I mean going through a whole host of failure modes.

Yes. Each new airplane type that you're going to pilot requires you to first attain a Type Rating[1] in it.

For instance, I picked a random link to a flight school that offers a B777 type rating course[2] - which takes 14 days of ground-work and 9 days of flight training (36 hours in the simulator in this case; often for big airliners it's going to be too expensive or impractical to perform a type-rating in a real aircraft).

Additionally, having attained the type rating, you're required to maintain "currency" in that type by flying it frequently; if you let type currency lapse by going too long without flying it, you need to undergo a kind of mini "refresher" training/assessment to regain currency again. This is the case for Private/GA Pilots in NZ at least, I'm not so familiar with other jurisdictions or license categories.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_rating

[2] http://www.balticaa.com/en/aviation-training-courses-/type-r...