Lonewolf, “…what they saw in front of them what was actually there”
I think it best to credit the crew with appropriate use of the WXR until evidence is presented otherwise. Plotting the proposed deviation on some weather charts suggest that it was in keeping with the general weather situation.
Also, assuming ice crystals were a major factor; these are more likely to be encountered around Cbs – up to 15nm away, although the Cb core probably has high concentrations. The analogy is that the Cb core is the chimney, and the crystals / grauple is the soot / smoke. The heavier particles fall out of the high-level cloud, whereas the light particles travel downwind in / under the anvil. In both instances, they are not easily detected with WXR (if at all).
Re #1549 “… were they set up to fail? If so, how?”
First I don’t think that we should pursue crew failure – you probably did not mean any negative connotation.
Like most accidents, the findings will probably fall into three broad categories: technical, human, and organisational.
There is insufficient evidence to judge any technical aspects at this time, but there are indications of complexities in the human / technical interface. Not that this implies technical failure or poor design, just different; and thus this requires a different way of looking at systems, different operations, and differences in required human behaviour.
The human behaviour is crucial. The crew were faced with a surprising and complex failure situation, challenged by weather, time, and changing circumstance. Unfortunately we cannot know what they thought, at best we might only speculate, based on what was presented to them, but even that might be less than normally certain from an FDR.
The organisational aspects might focus on airworthiness. The authority knew of the problem but judged the risk of simultaneous ADC failure as being remote (but warranting remedial action), and that the intervening ‘at risk’ period could be mitigated by crew performance, which was supported by evidence of previous events.
This was a failure of risk management, but a failure at or beyond the limits of probability, and based on reasonable assumptions. Yet perhaps a difference which was overlooked was that a modern aircraft with highly augmented controls might not be as easy to fly with pitch /power as previously assumed based on a conventional aircraft, or that the crew may not have had had the appropriate training / experience. Were the regulators ‘set up’; – by life, aviation; probably yes.
How long did it take to read the text above, to understand, to formulate any reaction … 3.5 mins? That’s all that AF447 crew had, and whilst we have had 2 years to define the major themes of the situation and improve our general understanding of systems, weather, operations; the crew only had blanks on the screen.
Such is human performance – variable. We are never set-up, only faced with the limits of our capability in a given situation, assuming first that the situation is understood.