> the pilot actually retired after that because he felt he could no longer trust airplanes

I don't know where that part comes from, it's not mentioned in the wikipedia page, nor any of the sources or on the swedish version of the page (together with the sources). Would be interesting if there really is a phobia of more technically advanced airplanes, but I don't think this is one of those cases.

As with any automated transport discussion, there's the question of liability. If a pilot is at fault, there's an obvious liability on them. People have an intrinsic trust of a human pilot to sort out an issue if it arises, versus relying on a computer which is a complete black box to the passengers. If a pilot is at fault, it's a forgivable thing - in the worst cases the families have some closure, some level of "the pilot messed up, such is life". If a machine or system is at fault, who's to blame? The engineer? The programmer? The maintenance worker? The airline for procuring a cheap contract?

And there's countless cases where it all starter "autopilot disengaged ..."

I don't mind paying 1% of ticket cost to pilots when it's hundreds of life in question. It's very different when you have 500 passengers and 1 passenger in a 35k car.

Those are not mutually exclusive. Automation has made flying much safer, but currently, there are edge cases where human could fix issues if they knew what the airplane was doing and were able to take over. This is not an isolated case.