The two Air Caraïbe A330, the AF 908, the NW planes did not experience any TCAS problem during the corrupted airspeeds events (slight altitude bias, a few 100 ft, -300 ft in the Air Caraïbe case). In the AF 447 case, it could be that the Pitot-static duo was compromised more severely/time than in the other cases ? Or the TCAS problem has nothing to do with the Pitot phenomenology (not my view).
-In the last evening TV news, there was some news about the analysis beginning at the CEAT:
Journaux télévisés en vidéo - France 2 at ~12:40, you get a close up on a map of the plane showing colored seats that were occupied by the passengers who were recovered.
-Thank you Unctuous for the interesting scenario:
BEA interim report* *Extract
This is speculation, but if the flight data are not recovered, the BEA will also be left to speculate
Speculating is not bad, as long as it also provides the means to be tested at one point (speculating is probably the most creative part in science, and... nice etymology).
It is speculated/hypothetized that:
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e. Disorientation (normally following flight instrument failure)
f. Thunderstorm encounter
g. Stalling or Mach Crit encounters near coffin corner (probably induced by an incorrect manual response to a warning alert - and involving a Flight Law mode change degradation).
The last two instances are the two likely scenarios for AF447. The history of Thales pitots and the similarity of the recorded fault sequences transmitted by ACARS is pointing relentlessly at scenario g.
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It is also speculated that the A/THR had possibly already narrowed the upper aerodynamic margin just before it was auto-disengaged along with the A/P when the cascade of ECAM alerts began. Then the pilots may have further reduced their margin (by reacting in an opposite manner to the Air Caraïbe crew) and got very vulnerable to the turbulences (that may have increased as they were approaching the main Cb cell within the mesocluster). Their stress was probably increased by a sudden & unusual event (a cascade of aural/visual alerts), their attention was split between failure analysis & solving, procedures/check lists impossible (frustration) to apply due to time constraints & very confusing about stall alarms (see Air Caraïbe), manual flight, monitoring met conditions,... At night, in the absence of outside visual clues, an increased workload with the eyes scanning rapidly varied parts of the cockpit and attention split, spatial disorientation may have played a role as suggested ? No pilot should be placed in such a situation (intrumental & procedural ambiguities) and at worst, if this can't be avoided, they should be trained for that:
-As automation grows within the cockpit, the failures get more complex, potentially confusing, and pilots have also to become flight engineers. I don't know about how they are trained for complex system failures analysis (all the ways for otto to get crazy) but don't you think that ground simulation training should also implement false alarms ? I haven't be able to find any pilot whose regular training in ground simulations involves unreliable airspeeds and associated false alarms
Hope this is because pilots have flown away from here. Sorry for not being concise.
Jeff