A few post back I gave a fairly accurate descrition of the accident sequence.
I too do not believe the automatics can be blamed. We train on a regular basis for the most horrible scenarios, engine fires/failures etc. It can not be that a simple failure(I know it didn't fail but it wasn't working correctly) of the RA could lead to an accident.
However I do try to learn from it, could I have made the same mistake?
Once again, the only thing wrong for the first 70 seconds was the RETARD annunciation instead of MCP speed, other than that the airplane was behaving exactly as it was supposed to. How many guys would have caught that? And, once again the FO might even have noticed but didn't realise it was not appropiate for that stage of flight. I have once descended in VNAV wondering why the A/C was not following the profile, only later to realise the A/C was descending in VNAV SPD instead of VNAV PATH.
It's gonna be interesting when the final report comes out and a transcript of the CVR is released if the FP or the PM said "retard" and the other pilot said "checked". I'm gonna go out on a limb and expose myself to the ridicule of the pilots on here, but I in that stage of my training I possibly could have not realised RETARD was not appropriate for that stage of flight.
The speed decay from FAS to stick shaker is beyond me, really!
But the recovery, the P/L's going back to idle, hmmm, however it won't happen to me now!
In the end, it's gonna be pilot error though, no doubt, but why??
Last edited by flyburg; 9th April 2009 at 14:43.