A proper evaluation of the system - as designed - would have revealed the opportunity for a malfunctioning radio altimeter to cause a reduction to idle thrust in flight..
Oh for goodness sake - when will you realise that the above scenario is a non-event and has probably occured thousands of times, due to a myriad of different causes, and has probably never caused an accident before, due to pilots monitoring their goddam thrust settings! We've all experienced A/P and A/T misbehaviour and drop-outs and its our job to manage them.
Anyhoo -Safta - thanks for that sim info- good information, although mindful of the recent A320 crash and a few other incidences I reakon the same holds true for any aircraft with a moving stabilsor trim (i.e any aircraft with a wide speed range). Once you allow things to get so out of hand that you have a stall warning with a bucketful of nose up trim then you are in a close to irrecoverable situation.
As stated by rainboe and others and ignored by all the armchair experts, the absolute key is to not allow the situation to arise to start with. (or not have moving stabalisor trims - which means either you have to cruise at 150kts or take off and land at mach 0.8)
Saftas information is great - but come on guys, 30-40 secs of uncorrected negative speed trend and 8 seconds of shaker? Do we really blame the aircraft if a situation goes unchecked for so long?
I really hope and suspect that there is a deeper cause to this crash, as I find it hard to belive that the 'human factor' can be that off the ball to ignore such a major developing issue for such a long time.