[lisper]

That's true, but 1) anomalous conditions are very rare and 2) as often as not the pilot is the anomalous condition. Pilot error is the most common cause of aviation accidents.

EDIT: Notice that you had to go back 30 years to find your third example of a human pilot saving the day. And automation technology has improved a lot since then.

[snom380]

Most of the time when a pilot saves the day he just disconnects the autopilot and writes an incident report. There's been at least four inflight upsets due to autopilot or sensor malfunction in the past few years that I can recall. Some of these caused serious passenger injury. Latest one I heard about here: http://www.aibn.no/Luftfart/Rapporter/13-18 Another one: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72