Hi,
1
Er, I'm pretty sure this was discussed on the previous thread - some time ago they not only "admitted" that it was a problem, they changed the behaviour so that when A/THR kicks out, the thrust remains at the last setting the A/THR commanded. The thrust setting does not change until the pilots touch the thrust levers.
Chris Scott wonders if the "G-Loading" mode of the FCU would have ordered up elevator and consequent nose-up THS movement via the autotrim system. Personally I think this scenario slightly more credible than Svarin's, because it is more of an edge case in terms of specification and design. That said, I'd be very surprised if the engineers overlooked this consequential failure mode given how thorough they were with everything else.
Well if I refer to the
1 quote .. it's seems they already overlooked one problem .. so why not some others despite how tourough they were....
Finally we have the scenario I consider the most likely, which is that the autotrim was responding directly to the pilot's consistent nose-up sidestick commands, but this in itself opens a can of worms because it is perceived in some quarters (incorrectly IMO) as an attempt to "blame the pilot" and get Airbus/AF off the hook. For a start, Airbus and AF are already on the hook to some extent because of the known pitot problem, and AF's response to the service bulletin not being expedited in the wake of the numerous cases where these failures led to near loss of control incidents. The old aerospace chestnut of a "failure of imagination" comes into play here, because most of the previous events occurred in daylight, where pilots had an external reference from which to aid their recovery of the aircraft. Prior to the accident, few seem to have taken into account how much more dangerous a failure of this nature would be in adverse weather conditions in the dark hours of night, which would suggest that the lessons of Birgenair and Aeroperu were not heeded as well as they should have been.
Due to the last BEA note from 27 May 2011 and how reported in the newspapers (after all ... the general public is also concerned and can have some opinions) the direction of pointing fingers his obvious ....
After all .. who was in command of the AF447 ? .. the pilots .. or (in France) the sleeping enginneers .. softwares dev of Airbus or AF management people that night ?
We have the scene of the crime (35.000 feet and icing environment) ... the perpetrators (the pilots) and the weapon (the plane)
It's just we have not yet a reason for why the crime was perpetrated ...
Very sad that Peter Falk just left us days ago .....