For 18 seconds after the autopilot disengaged the aircraft remained within 200 feet altitude of FL 360 but once AoA law was invoked at 14:21:50 hrs, the aircraft's attitude began to pitch nose-up. The pitch-up trend continued for 17 seconds reaching a peak of 15° nose-up shortly before the first nose-down sidestick command was applied. Throughout this phase the aircraft climbed rapidly (reaching a peak rate of about 6,000 ft/min) due to the increase in lift created by the flight control system's capture of alpha prot. The aircraft reached its apogee at FL 384 at 14:22:28 hrs where the airspeed had decayed to 205 KIAS and 0.67 Mach even though full thrust had been applied.
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The crew subsequently descended back to FL 360 and successfully re-engaged the autopilot and autothrust systems
To tell you the truth I have no idea what "Alpha Prot" is nor does it really matter. I do know that for whatever reasons autopilots do strange things; due to a software error, stray trons floating around, faulty sensors etc. My question is this; Did the crew have access to reliable information as to what the aircraft was doing at the time either through the primary instrumentation or the standby and if so did they have control authority to put the aircraft where it needed to be or was it really out of control?
If they did have access to the actually flight path information of the aircraft and if they had access to the control of the aircraft why did they let it diverge so much for so long?
Now I am assuming they were night, IMC and kinetics should not used but if they knew something was amiss for whatever reason why did they not respond earlier? 18 seconds and close to 3000 vertical feet is a long time/way.
1. The A340 only zoom-climbed at 6,000ft./min., whereas AF 447 zoom/climbed at 7,000.
2. The A340 crew were fortunate in that they were operating in daylight and no doubt had a visible horizon to work with.
But OK - if the 'systems' didn't cause the AF447 upset, what (in your opinion) did?
If the systems did cause the initial upset but the pilots failed to react in a timely manner and control and correct flight path information was available to them, then poor training did them in. If the systems did cause the initial upset but control/flight path information was not available to them then it was/is a design flaw.