Originally Posted by DozyWannabe
The people that designed these systems weren't stupid, and I'm sure there are very logical reasons for the system being designed the way it is. Remember that this was designed to be the next generation of flight controls - doing things a certain way because that was the way they'd been done since WW2 (or even beforehand!) wasn't a valid design input. Being as friendly and logical to the pilot as possible certainly was, the only problem with that being that some pilots prefer different things.
The way we flew airplanes before FBW had been refined over decades and was satisfying almost everyone. Why change? Why did Airbus needed to invent a new way of flying airplanes? Until now, I fail to be convinced the reason was for the pilot’s better.
It is my opinion that, after going FBW was decided, the governing specification was to extract the highest possible performance and reliability benefits off the new technology, a respectable challenge for designers, I must say. You can easily trace the major changes that took place and see where the focus was.
In the team that overview specs, the engineer/pilot balance favored the former. Of course, the engineers made a very good job. They reached their goals. Then, they managed to make the design acceptable by certification authorities and by line pilots, a not-so-easy task.
The Airbus FBW provides an elaborate high AoA protection in normal law. Is it just because it was not required by regulations that unless you trip the auto-trim it does not even provide classical low speed longitudinal stability in ALT law?