infrequentflyer789
Thanks for your response. Help me to understand how "relieving the elevators" does not acquire a massive amount of PITCH Authority in one or the other direction? The HS is acting as a lever to "neutralize" the effort required to deflect the elevators, ever producing more baseline AOI. Angle of Incidence in this sense is an artificial "neutrality". The FCOM alerts the operator to the THS preventing some PITCH authority above 180 knots? How is this alert benign to the efforts of PF447 recovering the a/c?
Yes, I think elevators alone would have been preferred. Once above a certain angle, and at >180 knots, with All Trim Fuel aft, recovering seems a tall challenge? In this sense, the elevators are "Trim Tabs", ineffectual at "boosting" the control surface (THS), to allow maneuvering. Instead, they have a range of effect that traps the a/c in fluctuating PITCH excursions. Neither direction is satisfying, to the extent that AoA is "never below" 30 degrees (BEA).
Not even Flare should top 17 degrees, yet here the a/c is at "cruise" and 16 degrees! Do we set out to castigate the pilot ("Je ne comprends rien").
Do we attack the machine? Why do either? The a/c in some way got away from her pilot. Some random misfortune is trying to tell us something. To the extent we make up our minds, we lose the opportunity to learn.
As an aside, you say "Elevators alone were sufficient to get her to 16 degrees and fully STALLED." In ALTERNATE LAW, isn't the airframe protected from such a thing?