If Pitots are the smoking gun...
It would be a great shame if the main conclusion from the loss of AF447 is to change the supplier of the pitots, and consider 'problem solved'. The criticality of IAS seems to be in need of an urgent rethink from a safety/system engineering perspective, too many serious incidents have already occurred involving unavailable/misleading IAS to consider that a simple fix is going to be sufficient.
Three sensors, using the same technology, in the same area on the outside of the aircraft are obviously vulnerable to 'Common Mode Failure' due to rain/ice/debris/birds etc., regardless of the supplier. To then use this vulnerable source to derive a parameter (IAS), which is used by other systems in a way that is critical to aircraft safety should be unacceptable. Is this a case of 'we have always used pitot tubes, they meet the regulations so they are safe, precedent is set'? A method that uses different technologies should be mandated; there are a wide range of technologies already being used for anemometers such as rotating cup or propeller speed, torque on a fixed vane; there are even laser Doppler and ultrasonic anemometers. There seem to be enough alternatives that 3 completely different sensors could be used, and then take the average of the closest 2.
Critical avionic systems should be designed to cope with 'bad data'; garbage in, garbage out is not an appropriate paradigm for safety critical avionic systems; the fundamental problem is an aircraft level safety integration problem, which (IMNSHO) is an issue that needs a lot more attention.
Industry are not to blame (nor are they blameless), they have to work to the the regulations; nothing less, but also nothing more. If a supplier 'over-engineers' their product, they are likely to become uncompetitive. The initiative must rest with the regulatory authorities (FAA, EASA, et al.), it is they that need to raise the crossbar in order to continually improve aviation safety.