Actually the aircraft wasn't being controlled directly by the computer on an 'auto-land' like many people believe. It was actually being controlled by rather inexperienced pilots to trying to demonstrate this aircraft at the Habsheim airshow. The reason it crashed was due to the pilots not understanding the long spool up times that the engines had, and hit the trees before the engines started to gain sufficient power. If you listen in the video you can hear the engines spooling up as it starts to go into the trees. So really i'd rather go on a plane without and inexperienced pilot...
Jet engines had been in use for decades before this incident, so this has nothing to do with lack of knowledge about spool-up times. As Hagar said, the pilot was a training Captain for Air France, so inexperience was not a factor. The crew were trying to demonstrate the ability of the Automatic Flight Envelope Protection system, which should prevent the aircraft from stalling by automatically increasing thrust. However, the system was not functioning properly, and by the time the Pilots realized and took control, it was too late to avoid disaster...
The reason for the engines spooling up as in went into the trees was due to the pilots trying to avoid the stall.
