Originally Posted by EKW
But I think the automation will perform as designed if the aircraft is not exposed to extreme risk. It is always humans that put it there.
Not it didn't. What was extreme about AF447 (and possibly Air Asia) being flown in conditions which it had been certified to fly in, that is icing Conditions? In that case, the fact is the crew and aircraft were entited to be there. They were not in a Cb, just flying along in Icing Conditions. But nevertheless, because of bad design, the probes iced up and the automation spat the dummy. Unfortunately, the crew couldn't cope. But to blame them entirely is quite frankly ludicrous. The root cause was bad design of the probes and unhelpful automation that failed at the worst time. Throw in autotrim in manual flight and poor training and you have stacked the odds against the crew.