Straight and Level?
I have been following this thread on and off for a while. I see contributors range from non pilots to pilots with many years in the accident airplane type.
I am a pilot myself, although only SEL, but I did shoot a message to a friend of mine, a pilot for Virgin. He is not familiar with what happened to the pitot(s), what the autopilot commanded or what the pilots did, so no flaming please on his questions because he does not have all the facts that we now know. His question is more on a basic level of the loss of control and whether the pilot may have been able to regain control by 'conventional' techniques. He has 737 experience but no Airbus experience. I guess we are both wondering whether the the answers to his questions have something to do with the interaction between Airbus systems and the pilot.
So, hopefully someone with Airbus experience can respond. Here goes. Thx.
"Is it difficult to disengage the autopilot, disengage the autothrottle, level the wings and nose in an airbus? This technique used for unreliable airspeed indications and turbulent weather penetration. There is an attitude and a power setting for every phase of flight, airspeed and vertical speed being secondary indications in a way. The difficult thing for me to understand is why didn't they just disengage the autopilot as soon as the nose started pitching up? And a jet will descend at a safe speed with the thrust off at 2.5 to 3 degrees nose down. I guess we'll learn all about it in CRM next time."