NigelOnDraft:
My comments Re 'classic 747s' was not meant to suggest that they were impervious to accidents, although the cases you referenced differ quite markedly to the Air France and QANTAS incidents. My point was, does a cascade of automated system failures distract / confuse a pilot from his most important job...flying the aircraft? Are these aircraft too complex? In the QANTAS incident the pilots became very task saturated trying to clear the multitude of system errors, and I wonder how they would have fared had they not had an additional two pilots on the flight-deck that day to assist.
I'm not Airbus bashing BTW, and as Iceman kindly responded to my query, both major manufacturers have their good and bad points. I'm merely posing a question for discussion.
Iceman, thanks for your reply. I'd love to hear your theory, but understand that it's probably not prudent to do so until more info comes to light. Will be interesting to hear how close you were when we do learn more...