Originally Posted by
CONF iture
From my personal experience, I just don't know what my partner is doing with his sidestick. At best, and it's not necessarily better, I'm guessing ...
And we know you don't like it - lord knows we've heard it enough times... Doesn't mean it's necessarily worse either.
When the captain came back, he probably took the middle jumpseat, from where, you hardly see any of the sidesticks ... How can he evaluate the flight control inputs ?
He could definitely see the fact that they were nose-high, which was clearly visible on the ADI indicators - that should have given him a hint. To my eyes it also looks pretty difficult to judge a traditional airliner yoke fore/aft position from the angle of that seat, so I'm dubious as to how much difference it would have made. Please don't try to make the situation fit your particular gripes with the aircraft.
And forget about falling asleep at that time. Did the captain fall asleep as well after entering the cockpit ? Is it why the BEA could not publish any comment from him ...
Note I said "perhaps" - by which I meant I'm speculating way out in left field. I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm not even saying it was likely. But given that we've exhausted what we can glean from the data at hand and we're into equally left-field suggestions of byzantine software failures and the like, I thought it should be mentioned as a possibility.
It's amazing that the design and systems (and by implication those that designed and built them) can come in for all kinds of bashing from those who do not know or understand them and it is accepted as normal, yet advance the possibility that a pilot may have lost focus, or the miniscule possibility that he might have fallen asleep and some people are up in arms.