discountinvestigator;
Understand and appreciate the disagreement. I wonder however, if it is possible to design a system which is capable of achieving a zero-error rate? As has been established here, notwithstanding the four accidents acknowledged as similar (not to mention similar historical records for both types), what must be borne in mind is the 50-million (or so) other Airbus landings where such misapprehensions regarding the autothrust system did not result in an incident or accident.
That is truly a remarkable achievement in and of itself, a fact which, while it may do nothing to diminish the tragedy of this accident, is a reassuring notion which demands perspective at least in terms of setting one's hair on fire at the slightest scent of heretical observations, (which have, I understand, perhaps very occasionally occurred here from time to time...)
A thousand posts or so ago, I mentioned the medical profession, ...would that they could achieve the remarkable safety record enjoyed by our industry, and that the iatrogenic (medical/hospital) death rate applied to our industry would be spectacular and the US yearly death rate by cars alone is a full jumbo transport (350 passengers) going in every third day of the year....
Such statistics (and they are not insignificant) would put us [deservedly] out of business in a heartbeat, yet for some reason, accountability, let alone visibility in these two clearly-high-risk societal institutions, is not addressed to nearly the same degree as it is in aviation.
Flight data programs literally invade our workplace from start-to-finish and we as professional airmen accept such massive intrusions into our cockpits as our contribution (not our only one, either) to the advancement of flight safety.
Apologies for the thread diversion; DFDR discussions including dialogue on sample rates, parameter availabilities, FDA/FOQA Programs at TAM etc, may soon become an important part of this thread as the DFDR information becomes available.