Hi there Whatsalizad, thanks for your reply. I suspected someone might take issue with my comments, and I have no problem with your reply. I've never flown a commercial airliner, but did fly in the military, and as you mentioned, Power + Attitude = Performance was king of my world.
Yes, the QA A380 incident was alarming / frightening, but they stuck to basics and got it right.
I agree that we don't know what indications the aircrew received, which is why I admitted that my comments might be jumping the gun. Apologies if they annoyed you.
I think your comments were fair enough.
I agree going to the basics that work rather than trying to solve an automation Rubiks Cube is the way to go. I still can't believe guys who spend time heads down at less than 3000 AFL typing for a simple VFR runway change. My preference in handling any automation confusion is to downgrade to the lowest level of automation, AP and AT off if neccessary and retrace the programming steps. I've found it's easier to ask "what it did" instead of "what's it doing now".