Machinbird,
I think there already are expert systems monitoring aircraft "looking for anomalous data using a wide variety of screening methods": the pilots. Like any other system they have limits and in this case they were exceeded. Their 'diagnostic bandwidth' was occupied/unavailable.
It is comparatively easy to take an example like one working and two frozen probes and figure out some logical/procedural way of discounting the false readings, specific to this actual failure mode. What is not easy (or indeed possible in our current understanding, as PBL points out) is to have a process which will always return valid data when 2 out of 3 of the inputs are misbehaving in some way.
The other point is why not have some sort of alert such as "AOA DISAGREE", which has been suggested in this discussion? Given the above, unless you had a forest of probes all over the aircraft, connected to a server farm in the hold, you're going to get that message as soon as there's the slightest difference between any of the sensors. Also, the QRH would probably say something like: "Lack of and/or false stall warnings may be experienced...", amongst other things. Would it have made a difference in this case, as other warnings were disregarded/went unnoticed?
I agree with NoD in that I can't see a pressing need for a change in the aircraft systems in relation to this accident. They performed as per the manual. The crew put themselves in a position where recovery from a manoeuvre was in doubt, by overriding safety limits and being apparently unaware of the secondary effects of what they were attempting, e.g. trim. They did receive a message to check the weight, which should have led them to question some of the speeds displayed but this was ignored due overload.
This is a very interesting accident from the HF POV, where there was a "crew" made of 1 FO & 2 captains who, under what appears to be considerable commercial and time pressure, elected to follow a path which ultimately led them to disaster. A lot to learn, here.
Last edited by FullWings; 21st Sep 2010 at 08:03.
Reason: speling