The more I read, the more clear it gets: the poor guys failed to recognize they were flying a full stalled plane, got absolutely scared by the bells and whistles blaring all the time, rocking wings, winding down altimeters, a panicked captain shouting instructions and simply frozen at the controls, failing to do the only thing that would have saved the day. Pure lack of proper training, basic airmanship & situation awareness. It's hard to admit that a lot of us could have reacted exactly the same way.
A perfectly flyable aircraft turned into a gigantic coffin.
Of course there'll be endless theories about A330 systems, speculations on Boeing x Airbus, if this, if that etc... "
Since accident investigations are carried out to primarily prevent future similar occurences, and since to me it is clear that the crew knew the aircaft was in a stall, but based on control input evidence failed to recover from it, IMHO the effort should next focus on why they failed to initiate recovery.
Here comes to play a major role of Airbus system design, like it or not. With substantial personal experience in both own circumstances and other's, there must follow-on a drastic system redesign:
a. A human is unlikely to adapt well to changing control laws. Why is someone, used to not trimming, start trimming all of a sudden while he is already task-overloaded.
b. Why would anyone have an autoflight system obstructing/ overruling pilot control inputs and decisions, in a stable transport aircraft. Believe me I have likely much more experience than most of you flying variable stability aircraft and rotorcraft. There is no need to override a pilot control motion, just to properly design the flight control system such that there is almost no likelihood of the pilot damaging the aircraft to become unflyable. This must be coupled with proper pilot selection and training. Too expensive for the airline? choose another.
The CSS (Control Stick Steering) Boeing design, an arrangement I flew as example on the Douglas A-4H Skyhawk, enables autopilot flight during which the pilot can make desired changes, small or substantial, by synchronizing autopilot feedback signal (nullifying it) in the channel the pilot has applied force onto, such that it recognizes the new desired attitude upon pilot control pressure release. Simple and natural for the human in flight, during blue skies and in emergencies.
I would never pilot an aircraft with not only a mind of its own, such as trimming, but also limiting my AOA command, whether within the flight envelope or out of it. As captain it is my call, I know how to fly it better than any lead system engineer, fill reports later, in 36 years of flying they were few but all very well accepted and approved.
The current modern pilot flight displays are overly saturated such that no regular apt and trained human can quickly build in his mind a dynamic aerial situation. 60 year old captains would need at least double the time for that. In research simulator flights, 18 out of 19 seasoned and young pilots alike, failed to recognize and act upon erroneous FMA readings and below glidepath approaches. To me this is more than obvious, and leads to e.g. a Boeing 737-800 flying an auto-ILS with 1:50 of idle throttles just to stall it before the threshold, without pilot reaction, till it was too late. You guys fly them and should be well aware of this.