Originally Posted by Carjocky
A supposedly highly sophisticated aircraft automation system just gives up in a flight situation which it cannot handle and gives control to the humans on the flight deck without any indication as to why it did this? WTF!
Carjocky, you are evidently not a pilot. But I will answer your concerns in case any other non pilots or journalists think your comments carry any credence.
Any autopilot/autothrust system needs inputs to work. If one of more of the required inputs are lost, it will stop working.
When the autopilot dropped out here it was clear to the pilots why it had dropped out, and it told them what control law they were now in. The PF verbalised the control law, and the reason for the autopilot dropout.
Flying without an autopilot is not a problem. Flying with unreliable airspeed is not a problem, and there is a QRH procedure to help you climb or descend, fly level and fly an approach. It doesn't take any time to "do" this procedure, since the first action for UAS in level flight is to do nothing - ie maintain the cruise pitch and thrust using manual controls. Unfortunately here the pilots for some reason (much debated and not yet understood) increased the pitch and stalled the aircraft. The exact details of the effect and strength of the turbulence is not yet known.
They then had to unstall the aircraft, with UAS. This, again, they failed to do as they did not reduce the pitch.
From the scanty information from the BEA, the only "surprise" from the aircraft was the lack of stall warning at very low speed. It might have been better if it was not suppressed, but to any pilot with more that 10 hours experience it should have been obvious that they were stalled. Quite why they did not see and correct the stall has yet to be explained - but there may well be more clues in the full report.