Hi,
First thanks to everyone contributing to this and previous thread. Although I'm not a pilot, but mechanical engineer, I'm very interested in all these details.
Pardon my lack of insight, but; I'm very surprised by the fact that there seems not to exist on this aircraft a "sink rate" alarm, working at lower altitude.. Isn't it normal for a fairly modern plane like this to have both a variometer as well as an automatic sink rate alarm?