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One of the oldest interpretations of this very old play is that Oedipus has a fatal flaw: “hubris”, an ancient Greek term for excessive pride. The idea is that those who suffer from hubris are so proud—so certain of their own superiority—that their judgment is warped and they make terrible mistakes. 

Oedipus's character flaw was indeed hubris; this excessive pride led him to his metaphorical blindness towards his true circumstances in life. He is self-reliant, has honor and is magnificence, but that is not his true reality; rather, the development of his actions and acts of pride turn him into a tragic heroe that cannot escape his doomed destiny.

Irony plays a very important part to emphasise his downfall through pride. He is initially blind to the truth in his present, but in the end when he looses his pride and is humbled by his downfall, he professes real insight and knowledge.  

I hate it to break it to you - and I'm sorry if you've heard me say it on enotes before, but the origin of the "tragic flaw" myth is not, as commonly thought, Aristotle's "Poetics". Aristotle, as scholars commonly understand it, wrote about a character having a "hamartia" which brings about their tragic downfall. "Hamartia" is now regularly mis-translated as "tragic flaw", when in fact, it means "mistake".

Oedipus' "hamartia" is nothing to do with his pride: his mistake which brings about his tragedy comes before the play starts when he kills a stranger at a crossroads. Oedipus' insistence on solving riddles, on finding the solution to problems, and on being a good king and ridding Thebes of its plague leads him, throughout the action of the play, towards his dreadful realisation that he has, in fact, killed his father and married his mother.

Oedipus' name can be read as meaning either "swollen-footed" or "I think I know", so that both Oedipus' origins as the Theban heir and his self-assured insistence on knowing are written tragically into his very name from the first moment of the play.

Why does it happen, then? Because Oedipus is a play about the fact that you can't escape your fate. It is also a play about thinking you know something - and the fragility of human knowledge. The moment Oedipus thinks he is safe from the prophecy - nothing, really to do with pride - he is travelling towards Thebes, and he kills his father. Confidence is complacence.