3holelover;
First, thank you for your moderate and patient response, and the opportunity to respond.
No, I did not mean or intend the post to sound and read as it did. It was too blunt. The post is deleted.
My point, I think, has been badly misunderstood because I have not explained it very well. Too much in a hurry and too little time to write well while on vacation....I should just take my wife's advice, and after this last post, I am going to!
I've read the document describing the Air Caraibe incident. I read (and re-read) the Airbus FCOM Bulletin posted by Takata, (since updated as A330 FCOM Bulletin #810/1, June, 2004). I have read extensively in the A332 AMM, in several Flight Crew Training Manuals regarding the SOPs for handling a loss of airspeed and/or altitude data. I've flown the 'bus since 1992 and instructed on the airplane and flown the A330/A340 since 1999. I have done a number of scenarios in a Level D A330 simulator. Like everyone, I am trying to understand how the accident happened.
There are 36 previous pitot events described in the BEA's Second Interim Report, Appendix 7.
I understand very well that once known, potential risks must be mitigated. My comments are not to be mistaken for an insensitivity to this primary requirement.
There is a history (of pitot problems) here but as has been eloquently pointed out by John Tullamarine and others, there are always changes underway which address issues raised in-service.
I think it is reasonable to assume that the software on this aircraft is not what it was when first introduced. I don't think such a process is nefarious. At the same time, I am aware of the controversies. The issue is well-discussed by a number of posters here.
I am also more than keenly aware of hindsight bias and am concerned that many of the comments which claim that "action was not taken" are based in such bias.
The view that the flight controls and computers were, though such an event is demonstrably, exceedingly rare, were a "trap" for pilots, is simply too facile, and I simply do not believe that this is the case, in isolation from other possible factors.
Further, 36 previous events did not result in an accident and the logical question to ask therefore is, Why here?
So...how to discuss the accident within such a context, without conveying the the impression that, "if not the flight control computers, then the pilots"?
In my clumsy and rushed way, I did, and now have deleted the post. But that doesn't alleviate the question that all investigators (I am not an accident investigator, btw), would ask...How did this happen and why? What can and must be changed to prevent such a reoccurrence?
I do not make the connection, "if not the computers, then the pilots". Even if the immediate causes are simple, the causal complexity of this accident is deeper and the lessons more important than "handing this accident to the crew".
The risk in talking about all causal pathways including human factors is just this. Rather than elaborate further at this point, I think it is best just to leave it there.
No offence taken - quite the contrary.