dear fellow pilots,
having finally some info about what happened in that cockpit through voice recorder transcripts & flt data recorder analysis, i wonder why the egyptian & french authorities needed so long to come up with a preliminary accident report, containing hundreds of pages.
for me, as an experienced 737/3&400 pilot, this accident is a modelcase of back to &/or lack of basic flying skills & lack of understanding of interface/monitoring between crew & automatics (flightdirector & autopilot). absence of crm & oriental culture behavior (f/o in all his announcements called the captain who was the pilot flying :"sir"), prevented the first officer to take over control of the airplane before it was too late.
here a small resume of possible events:
it was 04:30local time, so fatigue is a factor.
an observer was on the jumpseat, is always a distracting factor.
ground ops were rushed: if any one can do the cockpit setup/briefing even if it is standard & god willing & ask for the before start checklist in less than 2 minutes : let us know.
now the take off: normal sequence except on the flight data recorder: toga on for 2sec's then off?? problem with auto throttle?
most of the time we forget to arm a/t before pushing toga switches on the thrustlevers( is not on the boeing before t/o cklist), sometimes it just kicks off at toga push with red flashing of a/t annunciator, after all could be an electronic glitch, reengaging a/t & try again mostly solves the problem & if that doesn't work we can always manually push the thrustlevers to the proper n1 target(basic stuff we all tend to forget, ok maybe not all, but still. ... )
normal fma mode annunciator on top of eadi's then would show from left to right: n1/then thr hold at +/- 80kts, toga, blank,fd,provided the fd switches were on as the case seem to be.
take off sequence seemed then normal & at 440ft the captain asked normally for hdg select, fd command bar would then follow setting of hdg bug on ehsi. now the sequence of events is about to start : capt ask "level change" which is executed by the f/o, fma then should show always from left to right : n1,mcp spd,hdg sel,fd. the a/t should then reduce to climbthrust to hold the salmonspeedbug which would have then synchronised with present speed circa v2+20. here F/o announces : n1arm,mcp spd,hdg sel,fd which is correct except for the n1/arm.it's either n1 or arm but not both. another scenario could have been t/off with a/t off, see above toga on for 2" then off.i think this meant a/t on for 2 " then off, the first lh fma annunciator case remaining blank troughout the take off.
then comes the call by the f/o : "1000ft"
normally the pilot flying(here the capt) should now ask for "speedbug 210/220 ", accelerate clean up & folow std climb procedures. but he ask for a/p on, which is still ok, but normally on 737 the pf engages his a/p himself, controlwheelforces etc.
and here it starts : probably because the a/p engaged in cws roll only, removing the vertical hdg command bar from the eadi, upset the pf which was expecting the a/p to come on & follow fd commands, a not uncommon annoying feature of this a/p, still about glitches, fd bars not synchronised at a/p engagement etc.
at that moment simple corrective action is to push again hdg sel push button & check correct fma annunciator, if ok, pf now set mcp speed 210/220, clean up & back to normal business.
what actually happened was that the autopilot was disconnected after 4 sec's,you hear the cavalry charge on the voice recorder, confirmed by the flightdata recordings : this is still ok but for then someone has to manually fly the aircraft & if the captain who is still pf thinks the autopilot is still on & behaving strangely, switch it off again! & take over manually & the f/o as pnf who monitors & correctly announces several times the degrading flightpath into a spiral dive : "overbank" ... ... "overbank" should have taken over from the captain after the second warning & seeing no corrective action from the lhs where obviously the brain had already crashed before the airplane did as stated in a post before. but lack of crm & cultural behavior prevented him to do so. i even don't want to mention upset recovery techniques which could still have saved the day.
and so an airplane came down with nobody flying the airplane & the captain still trying to reengage the autopilot with 110°bank angle & about 30°pitch down. that the observer stated"reduce power, reduce power" which was executed by the captain was by then irrelevant.
it is just plain enraging that 140 persons + crewmembers had to pay the price with their lives for such blatant amateurism.
but our industry is in such a devastated state for a zillion of reasons, that it will happen again & again.
i apologise for the last paragraph as i have no intention to offense anyone.