It looks to me, as an amateur observer, that the automation vs. pilot-in-the-loop debate is today not yet settled. The Air France crash into the Atlantic was entirely caused by pilots who were used to automation, and made a series of wrong decisions when it cut out on them, even though it cut out according to spec (i.e. it did not fail, just handed control to humans as designed). It&#x27;s arguable that had human pilots been actively flying that plane the whole time, it would not have crashed.