I believe that if "FLIGHT CONTROLS DIRECT LAW" and "USE MANUAL PITCH TRIM" had been spoken in that cockpit on that day they would almost certainly have survived.
Those messages came up only as the emergency situation was already well developed. The aircraft had 50 degrees of bank, the stall warning was all over the place, possibly some additional ECAM MSG for the FACs, who would have seen and read those messages … ?
10 minutes earlier, as the aircraft was approaching VMO, a
golden opportunity existed to positively advise the crew that the AoA probes were in disagreement …
TyroPicard, I don’t think it is necessary to kill the crew a second time as we all agree the flight was really not performed as it should have been, but could we grab that sad event to learn something on the manufacturer side as well in order to improve safety ?
The Airbus is a very complex machine when you want to look inside, and in the doubt, it should not hide its possible status. Nothing can justify that the protections may bring any additional level of difficulty for a crew.