Bernd and Flight Safety.
Quote: "The Airbus design philosophy has, I think, been summarised by Dani (and others): The aircraft does nothing by itself; there is no doubt about who is in control."
I beg to differ with both of you on this point and with Dani who seems to be happy to jump to various conclusions both in this thread and in the Phuket accident thread and to then ignore these shortcomings when pointed out by those who are better-informed. Oh to be so certain!
The A320 has all sorts of flight envelope protections that will cut in regardless of pilot inputs, just to give a simple example. It does lots of things by itself - often despite the pilot's efforts.
However as I pointed out before, I have watched pilots struggle to understand the automatics on this a/c and also on the 737 NG. I have no doubt in my mind that the 737 is an easier aircraft for pilots to convert to and not just because it doesn't have the advanced design of the 320. It is simply more intuitive and therefore easier.
I don't know any instructor who hasn't watched pilots in the sim and aircraft struggle to understand what was going on at various stages of initial training but more importantly at recurrent training sessions. Some pilots never fully get to grips with the logic of some of the systems on this aircraft and that, for me as an instructor, is worrying. Any TRE will tell you of the confusion that is regularly created by the non-normal procedures for Flap/Slat problems, for example. And the FMGS must have been designed by a cretin, so difficult is it for pilots to remember which button to push until it is memorised. That is not good design.
The fact is, that this is a very challenging aircraft to operate when things go badly wrong. The ECAM checklists are not adequate for some failures and pilots end up switching from ECAM to paper and back to ECAM. There is something wrong with a design that is not intuitive for a pilot to operate. For all its faults (and it has lots), the 737 is a much more pilot-friendly aircraft than the 320. Please don't misunderstand my point, I love operating this aircraft (A320) but then I've had to force myself to really attempt to understand it. I do not enjoy watching good pilots struggle with its logic (or lack thereof).
It is because of these observed difficulties that I have great sympathy with the crew on the fateful night. The confusion created (regardless of whether it was created by their own error or not) by the lack of deceleration must have been every pilot's worst nightmare on a short, probably slippery runway.
The basic facts appear to be fairly clear as annunciated by BOAC. What intrigues me is
1. Why would any pilot leave the Thrust lever at CLB
2. Why does the availability of autobrake depend on spoilers
3. Why was this aircraft designed in such a manner that if the automatic deployment of spoilers fails for whatever reason, manual spoiler control is not available to the pilot when he most needs it - on the landing roll in limiting conditions.
Of course it is likely that the investigation will find pilot error (hardly in question if the TL was actually left in climb detent which appears to be the case). However, I wouldn't hold my breath about them addressing the human factors of man/machine interface which I believe probably played a (significant?) part in the error chain.
To all of you thank you most sincerely for your efforts on this thread. I, for one, have learned much from your contributions.