Basic questions/thoughts (please correct! - non-pilot asking)
1. I think AoA sensors are different from speed sensors, but could the pilots have believed that both were invalid?
2. I would like to know how this sequence of events was particularly affected by this being an Airbus - couldn't any make of airliner not suffer defective speed sensors, and the crew not have to control the plane in the dark using a basic understanding of the altitude/ attitude and AoA?
3. If the pilots did believe the stall warning, their AoA increase was so much that the stall warning went away, which they may have interpreted as success. However should it not have rung alarm bells that this was the result of nose-up inputs? What would the artificial horizon have been showing?
4. In the later stages, it appears they attributed their altitude loss to being in an unstalled dive, and only at a much lower altitude did they push-down, perhaps confusingly turning-on the stall signal (still deep in stall), and by then there was too much altitude loss to recover steady flight? Did the pilots ever notice that their speed signals were in alignment? And wouldn't their slow speed have been an indicator that they were not in a dive?