This is a really interesting and informative thread, congratulations to all contributors.
What I find fascinating is that despite having the most modern aircraft technology at their disposal, two experienced AB320 pilots may have caused this accident by failing to pull one of the TLs to idle as the aircraft was touching down. If so, it would seem to be a colossal blunder, in the same league as the sinking of the 'Herald of Free Enterprise' which happened because the captain sailed out to sea with the ship's bow doors open (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeebrugge_ferry_disaster). Clearly, 'Murphy's Law' is still alive and well!
The following extract from
http://www.airdisaster.com/forums (dated Nov 24 2001) hints that only a fairly incompetent pilot would fail to retard the thrust levers when close to touchdown.
PAX Question:
One more thing, from my usual seat I can hear a voice coming from the flight deck just before touchdown that is computerized and I swear it says "retard retard retard".
Is that right? What does this mean?
Pilot's Answer:
Yes that's right, it's telling us to "retard" the engine thrust levers to the idle position for landing. I guess the Airbus engineers figured that because the levers don't move with the autothrust system that some of us dumb pilots might forget ? It's standard on all A320's, and you can order it with the sexy female voice option if you want.
When considering ways of preventing similar accidents arising in the future, perhaps changes should be made to crew selection rather than messing around with the existing AirBus systems. The following link suggests that having more female pilots (tongue firmly in cheek) might help: