Originally Posted by dreamland
At the critical time(just after touchdown),control of the aircraft was in the hands of the computer,not the pilot.
I think you are confused, it APPEARS that the thrust lever on the R/H engine was never retarded in the flare (what airplane if any can be landed properly without reducing thrust at landing?), it had to make the aircraft float somewhat, then after selecting REV on the L/H engine, R/H engine accelerates to climb power. This has everything to do with the PILOT, not the computer.
(all still theory, not discounting some type of sensor failure until more facts are presented).
yes, but IF the thrust lever wasn't retarded - which sets of the chain of events by not deploying the spoilers, it can still be attributed to airbus's bizare non-moving thrust levers. You are quite right - no airplane can be landed correctly without retarding the thrust, but thats the point, in any other aircraft you would be floating along a runway thinking "why isn't it touching down, oh bugger I've still got some thrust on, Go around", embarassing, stupid maybe, but not fatal.
The concept of detents for Climb, TOGA power etc is inspired, much more sensible than separate thrust levers and a dinky little mode panel, but the concept of not moving the thrust levers between climb and idle is incomprehensible - what exact benefit did the airbus engineers think they were giving with that particular 'feature'? Every aircraft, ever built has the engine thrust proportional to some form of moving lever in the cockpit - it works, has done for 100 years. If it ain't broke don't fix it springs to mind.
Mabe the pilot did forget to retard the lever (can't see why myself), but the design and concept of the machine allowed him to do this, and that in my book is a problem. call it what you will, a latent error, a human factor issue, but its still a problem.
this is going to run and run, and I can see airbus needing to answer some particularly stiff questions in a court of law. The most relevent one being "why did you do it that way". Whatever one thinks of the other envelope protections on the Airbus, one can also construct a compelling argument to justify their inclusion - sure they can lead to mode confusion (so does VNAV on my beast), but they also provide a significant benefit.
I honestly can't see a single benefit from non-moving TL's, and can see a whole lot of problems, at least one of which is tragically now visible to the whole world.