Basics
BEA put out their initial findings to quieten the press clamour, as predicted in thread 3, all is quiet as they complete their investigation, at which point speculation can stop, and discussion begin .. I say that with no disrespect to some very informed input from some people here .. others less so.
If we, as aviators, look back to brass tacks, not one of us would want to be in the situation whereby we are trying to figure out how an aircraft is trying to stop us from having an accident, whether that is through protections, stick shakers, buffet .. whatever, brass tacks is about making the decisions to avoid being in a position where those protections kick in, here I err towards the rational of those pointing out the deviations of previous aircraft, and the personally observed fallability of AWW. From first reading, there are issues that will become clear when the final report is issued, they will probably focus on training and awareness rather than discuss big red buttons to give the airplane back to the pilots.
The wider point is surely, that loss of situational awareness took THIS aircraft into a regime that it could not make sense of, and took the crew and passengers with it, where as other aircraft did not encounter the same conditions, primarily by not being there in the first place.
Whilst all the technical discussions as to what the aircraft, crew, and training culture subsequently did to neautralise a dynamic situation are appropriate to patching the responses in future, (even if the effect turns out to be that under stress all those protections cancelled one another out) it is surely the avoidance of the situation in the first place which closes the first hole in the Swiss cheese model.
Lets wait for the report.
Last edited by Teddy Robinson; 20th Jun 2011 at 23:03.
Reason: Sticking F ...