I read down this thread from top to bottom and was waiting for something like this If this thread is going to turn into the usual french bashing, then it is a horrible waste of pprune's bandwidth. to rear its head.
Why is it a waste of bandwidth? If people have opinions surely this is the place to voice them. It has been acknowledged from the start that there were operational and maintenance related deficiencies in the way the SSC was operated by AF, and more recently there has been a lot of talk, speculation if you prefer, about the standards of airmanship in AF after a spate of incidents.
Fingers have been pointed at Continental stating that they were to blame for the tragedy. Can you blame the people there for wanting to clear their name?
By the way, as I recall, the Captain (Christian Marty if my memory is correct) was one of AF's most experienced and well regarded captains, so it will be interesting to see what comes out in this enquiry.