>why the plane allows a pilot to take a fatal action The plane is acting on sensor information, hardware and software, which might be flawed. That is why the p

>why the plane allows a pilot to take a fatal action The plane is acting on sensor information, hardware and software, which might be flawed. That is why the pilots always need to be able to do a manual override. Take for instance the Air France 447 crash: the first problem was freezing of pitot tubes to measure airspeed. That alone would have messed up auto-pilot. Then, the not very experienced co-pilot flying the plane also reacted wrong, and then the plane came down; the captain did not start to correct things in time. http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final.en.php http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final....