Originally Posted by
waltair
Maybe. Or maybe not. I teach people to fly these things. Done simulator with the China Eastern guys, this aircraft. Nice guys, I like them.
It would not surprise me at all if the report says they just kept doing “X“ until the plane crashed; never figured out what was going on. Human beings are fragile things. I would trust the machine over the man. I have seen people lock right up. And the other one just sits there. Totally possible. It is just how we are, we are fallible.
They are indeed. But this is when the training should kick in hard and achieve;
- Establish who has Controls. State it,
- Memory Items,
- Inputs to attempt to establish Straight And Level,
- QRH whilst the other is PIC.
- Work QRH Items for stated Outcomes.
I think they were doing more than just sitting there. I think they were very very busy. I think it's far easier to "Lose it and Lock Up"' in the sim (knowing it's only your job that's over and not your life) - a relatively consequence-free environment than when you're actually there in the air.
Sim work - it's hard to say - there are differences in the state of the mind - in some ways you're harder focused in the sim than real World and in other ways you're softer focused. What you cannot do in the sim is convince someone they're about to die if they get it wrong.
Knowing you're going to die will mean you will do ANYTHING you can to avoid that.
Looking at the somewhat spurious data so far - it looks very likely that the pilots were severely deprived of flight controls from on or soon after the initial upset occurred all the way to the impact on the ground. That would suggest a loss of one or more control surfaces.