Aptitude is unmarking packages as "Auto", is this a bug or feature?

I have a brand new Ubuntu server installation and go in to aptitude.

Whenever I set a package to remove, the default action is the equivalent of apt-get autoremove. However, it seems that when you go to Actions > Install/remove packages, there is no way to stop your current actions.

going to Actions > Cancel pending actions unmarks Auto on all dependent unneeded packages.

I have even seen that quitting aptitude and going back to install/remove packages has all the same packages listed, but, the auto flag is removed yet again.

This just seems wrong and I was wondering if it is a bug or by design?

If by design, can someone explain to me why someone would want to do this?