alex_brin, relax a little and consider your sources. He who lives by the news media dies by the news media, or something like that.
The news media is in business to make money. "Extrapolating" and outright "lying" make money.
The "I do not understand" quote does not exist in the
BEA report. The closest it comes is this:
At 2 h 12 min 02, the PF said "I don’t have any more indications", and the PNF said "we have no valid indications".
The plane's systems were feeding them gibberish for data is what they seem to be saying there. It also implies that at that time they both saw the same thing and were concentrating on their training, which at that time suggested some stall warnings were spurious and in any case recovery meant applying a little more power. We really do not know what data was presented to the PF. He was apparently sitting on the right hand side and the RHS sensors were not recorded the way Air France had the FDR setup.
We can infer from the data presented that a cluster of deficiencies all got together to conspire to bring this plane down. That's not fact. It's simply extracted from the data. Pitot tubes can ice up under conditions they experienced and display false, very low, values. The conditions do not turn up on radar which works best with water and works poorly on frozen water. The pilot training left out some critical "complexities" about high speed stalls and trim tabs. The warnings presented to the pilots MAY not have distinguished between "about to stall" and "stalled" which CAN but don't necessarily have differing recovery modes. The software presumed at 60 knots the aircraft had to be on the ground so stall warnings are superfluous, even at 37,000' indicated altitude. This is not quite accurate as this flight shows. And the pilots seem to have done inexplicable things given the data cluster fed to them when the auto-throttle and autopilot both disconnected.
The above list includes hardware, training, and software design deficiencies.
Regarding the software deficiencies no coding or programmer errors are evident here. They built the design given to them very well. And the particular design decisions may represent engineers getting overruled by management.
So there are enough issues here that courts are going to have a field day trying to affix blame. And some aspects of the plane and training probably should get revisited. How much is a good question. Perfect safety requires infinite effort which requires infinite knowledge and infinite money, none of which exist. And this plane is also far more reliable and safe than prior choices such as the DC-6s, Connies, and 707s I rode on as a child and adolescent. Major improvements may be difficult and, frankly, cost more than is sustainable for either AirBus, Boeing, or the airlines involved. (Some of these issues no doubt infect Boeing aircraft, too. Perfect is for God. All mankind can do is strive for perfection within our limitations.) Simple things like modifying training and using two different types of pitot tubes on the same plane may help. Modifying the software is a very expensive and finicky process. That may not be possible and training extensions to cover this may have to take place.
All of this is without the extended analysis I expect BEA to make. These are my relatively untutored observations with a subset of the data BEA has. I am willing to stick my neck out and suggest if it is pinned on the pilots that will implicate deficiencies their training.
And I've rattled on long enough so it's time to quit with a little observation to another member here (who knows who he is) that the Vertical Stabilizer appears to have really been a part of the plane affixed to the plane until it interfaced with the ocean. And note that I'm trying to determine potential causes and in no way apportion blame.