You don't know if your pilot today is battle proven, don't you? Having the option to take control from the computer, however, should be possible. I can't believe airbus isn't doing this. The news claims, the autopilot was turned off - so this means human control, no? I'm rather more concerned about having no backup radar on board. It seems strange, that only one radar is there, while a second radar could be in a less exposed position (being less useful for that reason, but for backup purposes).
It seems somebody is spreading FUD against airbus, and that's something which doesn't surprise me at all.
What if it writes itself in the firmware when you shutdown the computer just before rebooting, and loads itself back into the SMM during boot?
Maybe even restoring the original firmware? To work around space limitations, the SMM code could hide another rootkit hiding on the disk and download a new copy if the system has been wiped.
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss