I work for a major oil/gas and petrochemical company and a fair amount of my job involves investigating what we call catastrophic events. For this reason I follow investigations into civil aviation accidents as they are probably the best investigated accidents available and, generally, set a standard for other industries.
I have a background in military and sport aviation although not commercial flying.
This interim report from BEA has resulted in headlines in the press that basically lays the fault/blame on the crew. Indeed, it would seem that errors were made and I can see at least 6 of DuPont's Dirty Dozen raising their combined heads above the parapet. No doubt the cockpit transcript will provide excellent training in Human Factors in the future. Sad but true.
I have no idea of the BEA's remit in terms of how far it can go in a proper RCA of this event. So far we seem to have a good idea as to the WHAT and the WHO. However, when we get to the WHY we have the all too common finger pointing at the training system. Sure, a failure in training can be rectified relatively easily if the will and money is there. However, my view is that this is an easy cop out and that the true root cause can be disguised all to easily by following this route.
So, let's ask ourselves a further WHY: Why had the training system NOT identified the need to train pilots to deal
with inaccurate IAS indications at high level
especially in the light of previous events as well as known reliability issues with the pitots.
I would like to see this next step taken. There was clearly a decision making (or, more likely, a lack of decision making) process involved here that may be the real root cause of this tragic event. Was complacency also a factor here?
Lastly, I find AF's comments re the lack of AoA indications (is not the stall warning an AoA indicator?) specious and more likely made in what will no doubt be a blame game between Airbus and AF decided in the courts.