One in the eye for griff.

[Psaw]

I know you have faith in computers, unfortunately. Imagine this, you are on a flight and the pilot switches on the auto pilot to cruise. Instead, the plane flips over, heads down nose first, and the throttle goes up to full blast.

You are about to die.

Just like the Villa v Sheffield game, the ball was over the line by the distance of the earth to Saturn. Did the computer pick it up???

No. 350 people just died. I am sure soft ware engineers would put it down to a glitch, glitches that kill. They still don't understand glitches, it is unsafe.....

[griff]

That’s quite uncanny, Frank; really remarkable.
I’m currently on antibiotics for an eye infection, how did you know?

[cocopops61]

Accidents will always happen Frank,you can't predict them that's the trouble

[Dick Large]

Pilots do almost f­uck all nowadays. A flight is almost always automatic. Possibly some pilots do the take-off and landing. The computer systems do a much better job. Pilots have to take refresher / tests every 6 months in order to demonstrate that they can do the flying manually, should the need arise. If the computer system does in some way fail the chances are that there is a back-up system that will automatically take over. At any time the pilot can intervene to cut out the computer and fly the craft manually.

Undoubtedly there have been tragedies through aircraft technology doing the wrong thing. But given the number of flights worldwide since the automation first occurred it has no doubt been much safer than relying on fallible human beings to totally manually fly aircraft.

[Kessler]

Flying is a very safe mode of transportation and while it's not perfectly safe, nothing is. You are statistically more likely to die in a car crash.