G'day to you Bullethead!
Thanks for your reply. Thats interesting. I posted on the AirFrance thread on Monday requesting views about the viability of using Rad alt info or similar (GPS?) to provide the crew (and AP?) with another source of data other than pitot/static as back up, in case of failure of said pitot/static input. I did this after reading the report of a similar disaster (can't recall dates) following loss of pitot/static input. The crew had speed about right (from ground radar monitoring) but flew into the sea at night as they had no reliable height info and hence spatial awareness was comprimised.
For my trouble my post was deleted by mods and I was put in the sin bin for 3 days.
