Like many others in this thread I have been lurking for some time but now I feel a need to post. I have an extensive background in emergency response, safety management and incident investigtion.
This thread is full of assumed minor detail and subsequent rather pointless analysis. But it seems to me there are some helicopter view issues which I feel would benefit from broad discussion and I feel are the real issues here.
I don't get the vibe that all that many here understand safety and reliability engineering. The first issue is my impression is that there is a common mode failure issue which deserves greater attention. Regardless of the real cause of this incident, my interpretation is too much depends on elements that can fail in the same way. Does anyone have a comment on that?
The second issue is that I am amazed it took so long to initiate an emergency response. While it might not have made a difference to lives saved, how can that be the case?
I expected more from the airline industry, I assumed things were more robust and I have lost some confidence.