Note: I know there are some posts on a theory that maybe 447 was still in normal law through one of the PRIMs, and therefore the climb oculd have been a protection doing the wrong thing - I think there is a fundamental flaw with that theory, which is that in normal law the FCS would never have allowed the a/c t exceed alpha max, which it clearly did
IF789: Right on w.r.t. this
There are a number of problems with this 'hung on in Normal' theory - most significant of which is the lack of any comment within the BEA note of May 27th. I hardy can conceive of them (a) not reporting a disagreement of control law with that reported by the crew:
the PNF said "so, we’ve lost the speeds" then "alternate law […]".
If this had been in error or something mislead the crew, then I firmly believe that would have been stated in the note. Otherwise the BEA have simply hung the crew out to dry to some extent. I realized that many folk have been attempting to "fit the foot to the shoe" and have been postulating theories that might work with the data we have, but Occam doesn't sit comfortably with any in my opinion.
The BEA data is maddeningly thin, but the shortest distant between two lines is most often the route traveled.