I know of no case in transport flying where the computers prevented the pilot from flying the airplane and doing what he or she needed to do to maintain control and prevent an accident.
PJ2
Whilst appreciating and agreeing with practically all of your well written posts, I might just have to call you on that one.
The A320 crash at Bilbao I think does meet that criteria (
Accident of an Iberian Airbus A320 in Bilbao) - alpha protection activating in windshear and dumping the plane onto the runway as the pilots attempted GA. Maybe the GA was too late, ill advised, and would have crashed anway, I'm not sure - but alpha prot activation logic was changed by Airbus as a result.
Also there's the "locked" controls (A/P incorrectly on - computer changes control feel) at VR issue on a certain type. Now, the mfr's argument was that you
could, and should, pull through the resistance and rotate normally, so maybe the computer didn't "prevent" the pilots flying... but fact is that several crews
felt the controls were "locked" to the extent that they aborted at VR. Luckily on long runways...
The software was changed to fix that one too. [by Boeing, not Airbus, of course in this case - but for some folks that necessarily makes the incidents fiction since B-FBW is perfect
].