Hello 3holelover;
Didn't mean to ignore your question! I sometimes struggle with hypotheticals because I wasn't there.
That acknowledged...
I think
Lonewolf_50's last line says it all - fly pitch and power.
That is the drill for a UAS abnormal and that is what will keep the airplane stable while the problem gets sorted out. I think that every other response will likely destabilize the aircraft and make things much more difficult to recover from.
To your question regarding "what would one do?", faced with the losses you mention, I don't for one second pretend to know because I've never been faced with the problem. So
hypothetically from my armchair, obviously given the views I have expressed in the past I would do nothing except maintain pitch and power and call for the UAS checklist. The memorized portion of the UAS drill requires that one "level off and troubleshoot" and "doing nothing" (except maintaining control) is being done.
If I began feeling "light in the seat" I would ask what other crew members were feeling while checking the aircraft attitude on the displays I had and try to maintain level flight. Reading the standby in turbulence is a real challenge by the way - the thickness of the little airplane symbol (on the steam instruments) is about 2deg of pitch...a lot when one needs to fine-tune pitch! The job of maintaining stable flight is challenging in turbulence anyway but it must be done.
For the following discussion, we need to understand the layout of the A330 cockpit to see where the following panels are. Here is a rough diagram:
In terms of available attitude information, if the artificial horizons (all 3) are failed it means that IRUs 1 and 2 have failed so, (if I had the presence of mind...again, from the comfort of my armchair), I would ask the PNF to
switch the source of the attitude information to the #3 IRU, (ATT HDG, Capt or
F/O ON 3), (see diagram below).
It would be unlikely that all 3 IRUs would fail, and there are no ACARS messages that indicate any IRU failures.
But let us continue the hypothetical case.
If a PFD display had failed, (mine), I would transfer control to the PNF if he had an attitude display that agreed with the Standby and call out pitch and bank information to help him maintain level flight while we got the QRH out for pitch-power settings.
I would leave the ECAM messages alone until control was assured and stable flight established - which means, when the QRH UAS drill and checklist are completed.
In the A330, one can switch data sources to another DMC (Display Monitor Computer - see schematic below).
So, if one, two or all of the IRUs were working but one's own DMC had failed, one can switch DMCs using the EFIS DMC Control Panel to select either the opposite side display or the #3 display.
One can even toggle one's own PFD information so that the PFD and ND exchange displays in case one's own actual CRT display has failed.
Again, it is unlikely that all 3 DMCs would fail. Here is the DMC switching panels which are located on the far left and right ends of the glareshield. the top knob has 3 selections: "NORM" for one's own DMC, #1 or #2 for the opposite side DMC, and #3 for the backup DMC.
In brief, for all attitude information to have been lost to the crew, all 3 IRUs would have to have failed,
or all 3 DMCs would have to have failed
or all 4 screens would have to have failed (PFD & ND information cannot be displayed on the ECAM and SD displays). To see how all this fits together, here is a schematic of the entire EFIS control and display system:
Once the attitude information had been regained, maintaining wings-level is paramount then maintaining about 2.5deg pitch attitude is next.
After all this trying, if one still doesn't have attitude information, it is a very bad day and
very likely a loss of control, probably a spiral dive, would follow. I think it is reasonable to say that one cannot maintain level cruise flight in an airliner solely by the seat-of-the-pants.
I say a spiral dive and not a stall because maintaining wings completely level without any attitude information (external or internal) is far more challenging
in the short term, than maintaining a level
pitch attitude. A small amount of bank will start a turn, and also cause the nose to drop and the spiral begins, and quickly develops and tightens because the A330 is so clean and "slippery".
Even in general aviation it is well understood that if a pilot with little or no instrument training loses visual reference with the horizon a spiral dive is the most common outcome. The most well-known event of this kind was John Kennedy Jr's accident some years ago. That was the reason for the introduction decades ago of the requirement for some instrument instruction even at the private pilot level. So loss of attitude information without visual reference to a horizon almost guarantees loss-of-control of some kind, whether a high-speed spiral dive (very likely) or a stall, (less likely, for reasons given).
The BEA Update doesn't state that the #2 PFD attitude information is not recorded. However, the Update does clearly provide information on the bank and pitch attitudes throughout the report and this information had to come from somewhere. I think it is reasonable to assume that if the data was available on the SSFDR, for the reasons given above regarding failures of redundant systems, it was displayed on one/both PFD(s) and ISIS. There are no ACARS messages indicating failures which would prevent such display.
I think to claim that the pitch-up was the result of the PF reacting to a display that was different than the PNFs or the ISIS is not reasonable for two reasons: a) system redundancy and absence of failure messages, and b) the PNF would either have the same "wrong" display or would react and call out his own display showing something different. Also, at what time would such a failure have occurred? There is no connection between the pitot failures and a failures of attitude displays.
I fully realize that I am inferring a great deal here but I am also trying to think about your hypothetical scenario logically. If we are to think hypothetically, at least the hypothesis must be internally consistent - we can't just say this and that is "possible" without accounting for the design of the aircraft and its systems which preclude some scenarios.
I'm completely open to alternate explanations of the pitch-up but the explanations have to make sense and withstand reasonable objections.
At some point there has to be a rational explanation that makes "if-then" connections, ideally all the way back to the originating event at 02:10:05 even if some of those connections may be tenuous.
I know that isn't possible at the moment because we all have the same bit of information from the BEA Update. But some things may be inferred, (admittedly, some more "loosely" inferred than others).
I'm not stuck on the notion that the initial aft-movement of a sidestick was intentional. But at some point, first the initial pitch-up, then the continuing aft-backstick must both be explained.
I hope this is of some use
3holelover...as I say, it's all armchair work but those guys had to do it for real. As I have said many times, discussing crew actions is not "blaming the crew". In investigative work there are no "off-limits" areas however, and that can come across as "blaming". For reasons we're all familiar with, that unfortunately seems to be a way our culture thinks about these things.
Lonewolf_50;
Task the PNF to:
Reset a few circuit breakers to get something to work again?
Cycle some switches on and off so that an instrument may work again.
Yes, exactly. Although there are no circuit breakers that would accomplish this purpose in the cockpit, (the FMGEC cb's are on the overhead but they wouldn't help), the switching capabilities that I discuss above would be of immense help in any attitude failures, so long as there is attitude information available from an IRU.