Excellent thread despite drift off initial topic.
Glueball,
I dislike it when ever people like yourself say "what were they thinking?" or "how did they make a such simple stuff up?"
I don't think these guys were incompetent or insane. They got caught in a hole with too little time to recover. It was caused by what could be considered a flawed system.
Not sure if you're aware, but the simple act of not putting one lever into a set detent creates major problems. Think about this-
Not only does it mean reverse on one side, climb on the other but at a glance the engine indications would have initially appeared to be what they were looking for (i.e. REV1 green only), the other engine does go from close to idle to climb power at a steady pace without the other lever moving so your hands on the levers will not notice. You're busy looking out the window tracking the centre line, the other guy is looking for ground spoilers etc. Your ears will not notice ( you expect it to get noisy). Your reflexes will push the rudder in and keep the aircraft staight potentially without your knowledge. And the first sign of something wrong could be a call of "No spoiler- negative deccel". And don't try and put the ground spoilers up with the lever because, like the thrust levers, it does not neccessarily reflect the position of the actual spoilers and you can't do it anyway. Auto brake won't work without ground spoilers. You also can't go around because you have a reverser deployed. By this time your out of runway.
I only know the basics of the accident. What is written above is hypothetical as I have not read detailed reports but I have read the pilots manual for the A320 and flow this scenario in the sim. But that is as quick as it happens and anyone could have similar happen at anytime. Yourself included.
Having flown both moving and fixed throttles/thrust levers, moving are by far superior.
The aircraft in question was smart enough to know it was on the ground, but it was not smart enough to realise that one engine was reversed the other was at climb. Maybe Airbus could at least change the logic so that in ground mode, once reverse is selected on one, the other thrust lever position is ignored and fwd idle is maximum thrust.
Clark y