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The system functioned as designed. The ground proximity alarm sounded and the pilot in command took control.

It's possible the pilot should have refrained from engaging the autopilot during initial climbout. Pilot workload is high at that point in a flight, and fiddling with gadgets is distracting. Maybe wait until passing through 5,000 feet?

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Most autopilots are certified for operation over 400' AGL and that's a typical engagement level. If I'm feeling lazy or the weather or departure procedure is challenging, I'm more likely to be on AP than not.

By all means, the pilot/crew needs to be monitoring things and always ready to hand-fly the airplane without automation, but proper use of automation is safety-enhancing. When the automation fails, go down in level of automation and hand-fly if needed. Good presentation on the topic from an American Airlines training session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

>The commander stated that to save time before pushback he had set the autopilot Flight Director (FD) modes to Go‑Around (ga), Heading (hdg) and Altitude Select (alt sel) but without first setting a selected altitude.

Sounds like they were waiting on the ground and had time.

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